Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery.

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.

Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.

The world was floods above and fire below

The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.

If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, that might be the best way to die.