“Beauty is beauty due to the cruelty of selection.”

“The beauty of modern cities consists in a sense of their power, cruelty, impersonality, massiveness, + variety (as in New York or London) seen against the architectural vestiges of a beautiful past.”

“The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read.”

“The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction.”

“Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened.”

“No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was preeminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him.”