“They assume she was once gorgeously beautiful. Because now she looks so—bad. ”

“She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.”

“At once, she dropped her gaze 2 the floor so she wouldn’t have 2 meet the stares because she knew exactly how she looked, which was bad, very bad, extra bad from the top of her dyed head to the tip of her tennis-shoed toes. She had an enormous urge to look up and say to the class, “I’m prettier than this. Really.”

“It's a fucking shame that she's so intense because she's gorgeous. But there's something completely fucking terrifying about her.”

“[She] looks gorgeous, wearing the look of a mother whose kids are finally starting to grow up. She can take care of herself now, she can get her hair done and get a decent night's sleep.”

“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”