“I know," he said, looking down at himself self-consciously. "I am not-I mean, I look-"
"Beautiful," she said, and she meant it. "You look beautiful, James Carstairs.”

“Well," I said finally, knowing he was waiting, "you make me laugh."
He nodded. "And?"
"You're pretty good-looking."
"Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful."
"You want to be beautiful?" I asked him.
"Are you saying I'm not?”

“She said it was beautiful to be loved, and that it made everything on earth look brighter.”

“I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore, I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.”

“Karl's diary - Woke up at 9.55am. Soon as I woke up, I looked at Suzanne and she looked at me. I said, Did I tell you about the immune system? Suzanne starting laughing, I said it's amazing. She said, Not now.”

“Courtney came over to me and touched my cheek. I winced. It hurt.
You look like hell," Courtney said.
I shrugged.
She looked at Saint Dane, then back at me. "He looks worse." She smiled. "Awesome.”

““I’ll tell you,” she said softly. “But you won’t like it.”
He looked away from her. “I asked for the truth. Whether I like it or not, I have to know.””

“What does it say?" I said, when I had. She said, "It is filled with all the words for how I want you… Look.”

“Sometimes it hurts to look at you,” I said. I loved that I could say that and he knew exactly what I meant.”

“You look fine.
- Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.”