46
" Claire spoke often in her poetry of the idea of "fittingness": that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it--no matter how small or insignificant both might be--are matched exactly, are fitting. This, Claire argued, is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful....In Claire's presence, you were not faulty or badly designed, no, not at all. You were the fitting receptacle and instrument of your talents and beliefs and desires. "
― Zadie Smith , On Beauty
50
" When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Hallelujah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki had thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day. And then the kid drowned in the Mississippi, recalled Kiki now, looking up from her knees to the colourful painting that hung behind Carlene's empty chair. Jerome had wept: the tears you cry for someone whom you never met who made something beautiful that you loved. Seventeen years earlier, when Lennon died, Kiki had dragged Howard to Central Park and wept while the crowd sang 'All You Need is Love' and Howard ranted bitterly about Milgram and mass psychosis. "
― Zadie Smith , On Beauty