“I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves…”

“No matter how safe and beautiful it is, a cage is still a cage.”

“Are we animals because we're caged, or caged because we're animals? I think it's both.”

“...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?”

“Love is the cage and the cage is closed and the door is locked and nobody’s home.”

“It's not a loup cage, you know,' I told her. 'It's a holding cell. Or safe room. or secure room. I don't think Jim ever settled on a term he could live with.''Aha. It's a loup cage.' Andrea cleared her throat. 'I touched it with my finger and it hurt. Is that in case of marital problems?”