“It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?”

“She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.”

“Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.”

“The boy does well enough," said Vicente. "A goose does not ask much of life, after all.""No," she admitted. "Those who ask much are more likely disappointed. We should all be as simple as the goose.”

“He had thought love as a policy made a lot of sense for those who could manage it, and anyone who could manage it belonged in religious life. The rest of us have to struggle with more ordinary love, the common or garden variety: love as a crippling condition. Love as a syndrome.”

“...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.”

“Well, I learned to cook. At my age," she told him. "What's next? Art therapy? Anyway, I've had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases down on any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go." "Goodbye," said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman. "Not to them," said Glinda, "To me."She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. "Mum?”