How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.

You can't imbibe someone's success by f*cking them.

[T]here is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it.

The demon got up. The demon said Fool. To think you can eat their food and not talk to them. To think you can take their money and not be afraid of them. To think you can depend on their company and not suffer from them.

Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.

... chastity is not given once and for all like a wedding ring that is put on never to be taken off, but is a garden which each day must be weeded, watered, and trimmed anew, or soon there will be only brambles and wilderness.

And middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).