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

“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 is no longer I, she is too long ago, she is only she...”

“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.”

“Only he with the hobbled foot knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can appreciate what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us. That we in our sinful souls can ever imagine charity- 'She can't go on for a moment. 'We may not always be able to practice charity, but that in this world we can even imagine it at all! That act of daring requires the greatest challenge,”

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”

“I was quite a looker in my time," she said. Was she reading his mind, or only being smart, to know she must be hideous?"Oh, had they invented time as long ago as that?”