“If debates about beauty in nineteenth-centuryFrance were fierce, that was because beauty was seen to matter. Thiswas a world of political revolutions, of social reformism, of belief inprogress and human perfectibility. Why was it that beauty mattered somuch in such a world?.”

“Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away-- your beauty would go away,and there wouldn't be anything you could do to bring it back.”

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!”

“In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.”

“You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up they'll see the real world and say, 'Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.' And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's book illustrator.”

“To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.”