“Nature didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”

“The physical beauty…also cleared her mind of worries. Every day seemed to change the mountain, the sky, and the surrounding valleys, making them spectacular in a completely new way. Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”

“The world needed more fireworks- especially now that there was going to be a shortage of beautiful, useless things.”

“Not just your face was changed by the knife. Your personality— the real you inside— was the price of beauty.”

“Maybe human beings are programmed...to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it's human nature doesn't make it bad...”

“But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.”

“Or maybe when they do the operation- when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everybody else- maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore. -Shay, Uglies”