Chapter Nine

     "I'm ugly," she said.
     "You aren't ugly."
     "I'm ugly and I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life."
     "Listen to me, pet. What you're going through is awful, it's really awful, but it isn't a judgment on your future. You aren't ugly and you aren't going to be alone forever just because things didn't work out with this guy."

     --From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

Lucy always wanted to be loved. And for that, she thought being beautiful was what it required. Lucy kept thinking she would never be picked up by anyone and thought that it was because she was ugly. I don't think she is ugly. She has eyes that draws you in and I can almost see her long lashes make shadows as she reads or writes a famous book. She is like a child. I think she is quite beautiful. 

Chapter Eight

There are trails to walk in the woods and rules that say if you pass someone during the day you may simply drop your gaze to the path as a signal you are thinking seriously about your work and do not wish to engage in conversation.

--Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty

I like this rule. I don't think it's rude because I would like to walk on those trails and see what it feels like to drop my gaze when I meet someone. I can only be jealous of Lucy and Ann whom I imagine to have walked those trails countless times and dropped gazes at many other writers at Yaddo. 

Chapter Seven

Levi did kill himself after all, but it interests me greatly precisely because I am at a total loss to describe how I am different, how what I know now differs from what I knew then. This is a language problem: the disparity between the two selves, between the two sets of truths, is very real and clear to me, yet my ability to control this knowledge in any sort of narrative or verbal way veers off constantly. 

--From Ann Patchett's Truth and Beatuy, an excerpt from Lucy's letter to Ann

Lucy comes to believe that there are some people out there who has suffered far more pain than she did. Levi is one of them. And here in her letter, Lucy is trying to find out the subtle difference "between the two sets of truths"--that separates her accusations of ingratitude towards others and her own lack of gratitude for what she already has: life. Later, in her book Autobiography of a Face, Lucy writes a very truthful and beautiful story of herself, ultimately about that difference, with stupendous poignancy. 

She did not veer off.