“We ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.”
“As I started to think seriously about how I could become the person I wanted to be, I looked around at some of the people who’d had the biggest impact on my life.”
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
“I am convinced that since my imprisonment I have changed woefully and gruesomely from what I was formerly in feature and figure…My head and face are gradually assuming an elongated shape. I believe fully that I am growing to resemble the devil—that the similitude is almost completed.”
“A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.”
“She came round where I could see her, her arms halfway stretched out as though she would have liked to embrace me but dared not. I jumped aside. Did I think her touch would taint me? Somehow infect me with the weakness I perceived in her? ‘You could have done anything, been anything you wanted.’
‘But I am what I wanted to be,’ she said letting her arms fall to her sides. ‘I chose. No one made me become what I am.‘”
“Hey Marnie, they say tonight the stars will fall out of the sky, and if you stick out your tongue one might land on it, and if you swallow it then you become a star yourself.”
“So she became, and her process of becoming was like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her; acquired virtues that were easy to maintain; assigned herself a role in the scheme of things; and harked back to simpler times for gratification.”