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. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
“When dealing with my mother, one always had to act in a delicate and prescribed way, though the exact rules of protocol seemed to… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Anxiety and anticipation, I was to learn, are the essential ingredients in suffering from pain, as opposed to feeling pain pure and simple. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
All narratives, even the confusing, are implicitly hopeful; they speak of a world that can be ordered, and thus understood. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Partly I was honing my self-consciousness into a torture device, sharp and efficient enough to last me the rest of my life. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
“Reinforced to me again and again was how I was a ‘brave girl’ for not crying, a ‘good girl’ for not complaining, and soon… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Animals were both the lives I took care of and the lives who took care of me. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
Beauty, as defined by society at large, seemed to be only about who was best at looking like everyone else. — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image
I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which… — Lucy Grealy Copy Share Image