“Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.”

“She looked around. They had drifted far away from the bank of the canal. "Are we stealing this boat?" "Stealing' is such an ugly word," he mused. "What do you want to call it?" He picked her up and swung her around before putting her down. "An extreme case of window-shopping.”

“Pip winds his arms up around Lindsay's neck and kisses him back, and this timehe's the one to close his eyes and escape into darkness so there's nothing in the world except the soft curls under hisfingers and the touch of Lindsay's breath on his mouth and the slow, sliding friction."Lindsay, do you still hate me?""I do when I remember to," Lindsay says quietly, but he doesn't stop moving and he doesn't stop kissing him for a long time, on his trembling mouth and his sweaty forehead and his wet, closed eyes.”

“Again from a distance, Sukie was once again struck by her mother's chic and how different things can seem from far away, how there's more than one truth, the faraway truth and the truth close up.”

“Big don't mean ugly, and thin sho don't mean pretty. If a person wants to be pretty, they gotta walk pretty, talk pretty and act pretty. Can't nobody take pretty from you.”

“God, buses are so ugly when you see them that close.”