“Well, it probably won't live. They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself. She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking. Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground. Well, I wouldn't worry none. It be a miracle if it live.”

“She fancied herself superiour to her surroundings: surely there were higher things to live for. Yet the ugliness of this room was but a part of what she felt to be the dreariness of all life outside of books.”

“And that is why we must answer her hatred with love. I can't say whether it will change her in her heart - it probably won't. But if it makes her feel even just a little bit better about herself, she will be less envious.”

“She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.”

“She wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones.Maybe they didn't make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn't want to live forever.”

“I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.”