“My duchess,” James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. “She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.”

“I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.”

“In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water? The Wise are Who They Are. They work with what they've got and do what they can do.”

“She wanted to walk into a crowded restaurant where a man would look up and take her into his arms with his eyes. She wanted to know what it was like to feel that she was beautiful to someone and had been eagerly waited for”

“To ugly ducklings everywhere,Don't worry about those fluffy yellow morons:They'll never get to be swans”

“And while we're on the subject of ducks, which we plainly are, the story, 'The Ugly Duckling' ought be banned as the central character wasn't a duckling or he wouldn't have grown up into a swan. He was a cygnet.”