“When she slept, she looked peaceful, beautiful. Not Lena's kind of beautiful, something different. She looked content - like a sunny day, a cold glass of milk, an unopened book before you cracked the binding.”
“When she looked in the mirror these days, she saw someone she didn't recognize...She saw an old woman trying to be beautiful, her skin dry and her wrinkles like cracks. She looked like a very well-dressed winter apple.”
“What she looks like and what she is capable of doing are two different things. Wickedly beautiful.”
“And you look beautiful," she added."I look like a cake.""But a beautiful cake.”
“But even in the unglamorous warp of the peephole, she looked like a million sunny days to me.”
“Grandma kept turning around in the front seat of their old Fiat saying, "Look at you girls! On, Lena, you are a beauty!"Lena seriously wished she would stop saying that, because it was irritating, and besides, how was cranky Effie supposed to feel?”