“The snow was endless, a heavy blanket on the outdoors; it had a way about it. A beauty. But I knew that, like many things, beauty could be deceiving.”

“I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.”

“The snow crystals . . . come to us not only to reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Nature, but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade way. But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent, like the beauties of the autumn, as of the evening sky, it fades but to come again.”

“His mother had said that men were handsome and women beautiful, but after seeing Benjamin swimming and then lying on his blanket, David knew his mother was completely wrong—Benjamin was beautiful.”

“She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her.”

“For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn't want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune.”