““Everybody rich and happy.” She smiled. “Also complacent and rather stupid, you may have noticed.””

“I looked at Rachel. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you? I mean…. you talked to Chiron, right?"
She managed a faint smile. "You're worried aboutdoing something stupid?”

“my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw”

“Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile.”

“she may not be the most popular or prettiest but if you love her and she makes you smile.. what else matters?”

“I may be fat and ugly, but I'm not stupid. If anyone had ever gotten past my looks, they might've noticed I have a brain.”

“She was starting to feel a little like a hamburger at a dieters’ convention. Nobody was likely to snack on her, but absolutely everybody noticed she was edible.”

““Will you write the story?”
“If there is one.”
“Happy ending or no?” He was serious.
She attempted a smile. “Fairy tales always have a happy ending.”
He leaned back in his chair. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you are Rumplestiltskin or the Queen.””

“But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.”

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.”