Beauty, as defined by society at large, seemed to be only about who was best at looking like everyone else.

When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.

I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.

All narratives, even the confusing, are implicitly hopeful; they speak of a world that can be ordered, and thus understood.

The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance.

Beauty, as defined by society at large, seemed to be only about who was best at looking like everyone else.

Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life.