Why lock yourself in your own cage when someone is handing you a key?

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

There were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors

We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.

I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.

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.

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