“If the unlettered farmers of Munchkinland and the factory workers of Gillikin believe that their fate is being determined by how the Time Dragon dreams them up, they don't need to bother to take responsibility for their actions or for changing their class and station in life.”

“To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows”

“I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.”

“Children played at those stories; they dreamed about them. They took them to heart and acted as if to live inside them.”

“Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience. ”

“A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.”

“I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read.”