Madame Morrible Quotes

[after discussion about what evil is, a question asked to Elphaba on why she killed Madame Morrible] "Why did you do it?" asked the hostess with spirit. The Witch shrugged. "For fun? Maybe evil is an art form.

Madame Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed just a tad—oh—dangerous. As if her big public smile were composed of the light glancing off knives and lances, as if her deep voice masked the rumbling of distant explosions. Galinda always felt as if she couldn't see the whole picture.

...I remember the etymology of the word Oz, at least a proposed at a lecture by our Head, Madame Morrible. She said that academics were inclined to locate the root of the term in Gillikinese cognate oos, which carries freights of meaning about growth, development, power, generation. Even ooze, with its distant companion noun virus, is thought to belong to the same general family. The older I get, the more accurate this derivation seems to be." "And yet the poet of the Oziad calls it "Land of green abandon, land in endless leaf.'" "Poets are just as responsible for empire building as any other professional hacks.

Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste, given the Banns on Animals Mobility." "Doctor Dillamond, alas," said Madame Morrible, "is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a God, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor Dillamond doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please?" "I don't believe I can, Madame." "Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without." "So that phrase that he objected to - Animals should be seen and not heard - that was ironic?" continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room would have enjoyed seeing the other crumble in a sudden attack of the spleen. "One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose," said Madame Morrible. "How do you choose?" said Elphaba. "How impertinent!" said Madame Morrible. "Well, but I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn. If you - if anyone - thought that statement was true, then it isn't in conflict with the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It's just argument and conclusion, and I don't see the irony." "You don't see much, Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible. "You must learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by the walls of one's own modest acumen, well, it is very sad in one so young and bright." She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda, somehow, a low comment on Elphaba's skin color, which today was indeed lustrous with the effort of public speaking. "But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond," said Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up. "In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may indeed be true. Animal should not be heard," snapped Madame Morrible. "Do you mean that ironically?" said Elphaba, but she sat down with her hands over her face and did not look up again for the rest of the session.

The Headmistress of Crage Hall, a fish-faced upper-class Gillikinese woman wearing a lot of cloisonné bangles, was greeting new arrivals in the atrium. The Head eschewed the drabness of professional women’s dress that Galinda had expected. Instead the imposing woman was bedecked in a currant-colored gown with patterns of black jet swirling over the bodice like dynamic markings on sheet music. “I am Madame Morrible,” she said to Galinda. Her voice was basso profundo, her grip crippling, her posture military, her earrings like holiday tree ornaments.

Madame Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed just a tad—oh—dangerous. As if her big public smile were composed of the light glancing off knives and lances, as if her deep voice masked the rumbling of distant explosions.

Well,” said Madame Morrible in a carrying tone, “one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art.

Galinda shivered, and was sure Madame Morrible felt it, knew it, but the Head never registered a sign of it. "But then, my use of sorority - how ironic. Too witty. Give a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn't ironic in the end.

Well," said Madame Morrible in a carrying tone, "one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art." "I think she's bonders," said Elphaba.

And Madame Morrible? And Yackle? Was there any connection? Were they the same person, were they harsh divinities, avatars of a power of darkness, were they poisonous flitches struck from the evil body of the Kumbric Witch? Or were they—singly, or together—old Kumbricia herself, or such as could be presumed to have survived from the heroic age of mythology into these crabbed, cramped, modern days? Did they govern the Wizard, jerk him about like a marionette? Who is in thrall to whom?