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.

The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build.

What goes unnamed remains hard to correct.

Her sister's shoes. They sparkeled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkeled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood and thorny stars.

In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.

[Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?" "You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]

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.