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“How about making them smarter?”
“Doing what you’re supposed to do is always boring.
Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.”
For a moment, Shay’s ugly face looked perfect.
But when you’re pretty, people pay more attention.”
That’s what monoculture means: Everything the same.
The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.
The really ugly ones are politicians, and someone told me the fatties are mostly comedians.”
Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.
as if growing up here in the wild allowed him to fuse with the animals that had donated their skins to his clothes.
Here, in the Smoke, objects grew old, carrying their histories with them in dings and scratches and tatters.
Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers.
History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.
Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same was everyone thinking the same.
It was the cold expressions of the Specials, beautiful though they were, that seemed horrific to her now.
Croy would have kicked his own shoes off, then whispered to whomever he could: “Tally’s free, and barefoot.” They’d left her with a score of pairs to pick from, the only way they could help the one Smokey they’d seen escape.
“They didn’t take the books out before they…,” she cried. “But why?” “They don’t want people to know
“Maybe they didn’t want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There’s always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away, all that’s left is some story in a history class.”
And that was her city in a nutshell, Tally realized. Nothing left to itself. Everything turned into a bribe, a warning, or a lesson.
she would sneak in to spy on uglies.
Tally felt she could almost accept brain damage if it meant a life without reconstituted noodles.
One thing about being pretty, people put up with your annoying habits.
Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you?
Your personality—the real you inside—was the price of beauty.
“In a lot of ways, you and Dr. Cable are alike. You’re both convinced you’ve personally got to change the world.
