“Ambition, Rose. It squeezes us into corners and turns out ugly shapes.”

“Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.”

“When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.”

“I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.”

“Love is no true-made looking-glass
Which perfect yields the shape we bring;
It ugly shows us all that was,
And flatters every future thing.”

“it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams”

“You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.”

“Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker.”

“It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.”

“Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.”