Lexie Mealey

“So let my hands and my face make their way in this world, let my hungry eyes see, my tongue taste.”
― Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

“...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.”
― Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

“Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures.”
― Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

“...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.”
― Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister