Justina Chen Headley

“Maybe we don't have the same definition of about what's beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty.”

“If there was one thing I refused to be, it was an insignificant footnote in some boy's history.”

“Progress is hard on history.”

“Maybe that was the problem," Jacob said softly. "Don't we all need to feel needed? That we'd be missed if we were gone?”

“Hey, if it's a good philosophy, it works. Death is imminent. Live every day like it's your last.”

“So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed?”

“North-ish." A pause, and then: "Is that Terra for I'm lost-ish?”

“You know, sometimes the most direct route isn't the right one. - Jacob”

“Silence, too, can be torture.”

“From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed.”

“Jacob: "Let her stare."Terra: "What?"Jacob: "Yeah most of the starers are just curious. Smile back. That's what I used to do.”

“Hao Kan," I said gently, quietly, firmly as if it was a pact between the two of us. She blinked. I wasn't sure if she understood. Or if she believed she was beautiful. So I pointed at her and then to me. And I repeated with utter conviction, "Hao Kan." Those words, my pronouncement, won me the girl's slow nod. I nodded back. And when she smiled, wide and open, I tell you, there was nothing more beautiful that that.”

“I didn't have the language to communicate that to this little girl -- or to communicate that beauty -- real everlasting beauty -- lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.”

“I took her hand in mine, not the way I used to hold hers as a child, but with our fingers woven together. And we strode through the archway of emperors and into the open -- hand in hand, my mother and I.”

“Ever the collector of treasure maps that promised the world but led nowhere.”

“No power was total, no power permanent, no power absolute.”

“There is a time to study a map passionately, obsessively. To see where you've gone, where others have gone before you. To commit to memory every obstacle, every danger. Shakespeare had a term for this obsession: mappery. But there is a time, too, when you say, come dragons. I challenge you to find me.”

“But even quashed rebellions leave us different. Because freedom may be a forbidden fruit in tyrannies, but once tasted, it is unforgettable.”

“I preferred my brand of beauty where Norah was more beautiful than any bimbette, and Mom was beautiful whether sized extra-small or extra-large. Where Peony could look at herself in the mirror and murmur, wow, look at me. Just look at me.”

“I understood now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he is.”

“What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?”

“I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?”

“The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.”

“What was so miraculous about a relationship that was based more on my gratitude than on mutual self respect?”

“There is real comfort in being quiet.”

“Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?”

“Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun.”

“You would be surprised what two hours of daily exercise and five hundred stomach crunches can do for you.”

“Beauty—real everlasting beauty—lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.”

“You know, there are easier ways to meet a guy than to run him over.”

“A pathfinder's job is hard enough — blazing trails where there are none, guided by nothing but hearsay and gut. While you're hacking your way through bracken, worrying about lurking beasts, all you can do is hope you had chosen the right direction.”

“Wait!"What?" I lowered my cup hastily, wondering if maybe there was a stray hair, or worse, a newly boiled bug inside my cup.You got to smell it first. It's the proper way to cup coffee."Cup coffee?"Taste it."What? Are you the coffee police or something?”

“I just told Max flatly, "I had laser surgery last week to lighten my birthmark," as if it was no big deal.Oh yeah?" he said. Unexpectedly, Max swiveled around, yanked his pants down.The last thing I thought I had wanted to see tonight was Merc walking out the door. I was wrong. It was this stranger's rear end. "Please don't tell me this is one of those stripping telegrams?”

“Come on, don't you ever stop and smell the coffee?”

“Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.”

“I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.”

“[True beauty] seeps into you. It doesn't make you forget yourself, but totally the opposite. It connects you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something that glorious. Like a sunrise or a clear blue day or the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly...you have this epiphany that there's more to the world than just you and what you want or even who you are.”

“Like world describers before me, those mapmakers in the seventeenth centure, I had laid down my first faintly drawn border. With that one tentative mark, my world expanded by a few freeing degrees.”

“Jolie laide = "pretty ugly"Draws you to it...bored into heart and mind.”

“If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole?You'd have to remove the layers. You'd have to risk breaking the ball for a chance at freeing it. Fear, knowledge, certainty - you'd have to be willing to let them all go.”

“I didn't know that the world could be so mind-blowingly beautiful.”

“There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.”

“When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.”

“My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither.”

“The look he gave me...My stomach quivered in that exact same way when I watched Before Sunset, yearning for a guy to know me so deeply and truly, we were only really complete when we were together. That I could talk, go on wild tangents, make obtuse references, and he would divine my meaning before I knew what I was trying to say myself. Erik had fallen asleep next to me on the couch, complaining later that the movie was "just people talking." He had no idea that this movie could have been a love letter written for me.”

“Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring.”

“You don't need a geochache for this one.""You don't, huh?""Nope.. here I am. Here I am.”

“Maybe getting around in life was nothing but map-reading. A skill that required practice. A key to unlock where you wanted to go. A legend to show where you were.”

“And then there was Jacob, who stepped closer to me and then waited, letting me decide whether I would take the next step. Balanced there in indecision, it was as if the Twisted Sisters were before me, shaking their pom-poms, asking: But what is fair about staying with a guy who is ashamed to be seen with you? What was so miraculous about a relationship that was based more on my gratitude than mutual respect.”

“That's exactly why nature always trumps gardens. Gardens are just reality pruned of chaos. What doesn't work you rip out.”