“She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.”

“Life is lived on the inside. What's outside doesn't matter.”

“I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.”

“I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.”

“I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.”

“You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive.”

“No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'.”