I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

It has always been a mystery to me ... how beauty and anguish can share the same moment

What distressed me most — more even than my own folly — was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?

The world's as ugly, ay, as Sin,—
And almost as delightful.

I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same can be both.

The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. (Death)

I want to know, for example, why beauty exists," she [Gabrielle] said, "why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough.

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.

The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

She was beautiful all right, beautiful in a way that was at once seductive, demonic, and raspberry.

Beauty and ugliness are manifestations of the self-The lovely colorless is in each color.

I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

Many things that if you’re attractive it for us become ugly to us when we gain deeper knowledge: a building that took an oppressed class to build, a tool that will not hold an edge, clothes that shrink or fade on Washington. Are these beautiful? That way we answer this question is momentous impact for our concept of society.