She was there and radiant. She was in Group Fifteen, holding onto the thick, gray-colored electromechanical transducer wire that stretched from the priest in front to the loudspeaker being carried behind. She was supposed to be in Group Twenty-five - silly girl: what a silly girl she was! What a huge forehead - and no chin! What a beautiful silly girl: those Japanese eyes! those huge lips! that short, straight, and yet, upturned nose. That mouth of hers was hanging open. How funny it was that she couldn't close her mouth! How absurd - and yet, so valuable! So endearing! and yet, so trivial. It made her look almost innocent. Like the guilty fool, she was difficult to judge. Was she beautiful or not? Was she beautiful when she smiled? Yes, she was beautiful. Was that huge mouth of hers beautiful? Yes, it was beautiful. Was she beautiful when she puckered her tiny, little chin by crooking her humongous jaw? Well, kind of: her little chin was beautiful (it complemented, among other things, her huge forehead) but sometimes she made her chin look sort of strange, as if she were trying to make herself look ugly or else to communicate something - perhaps, befuddlement. It was very unclear - unlike her eyes, which communicated things with unabashed honesty - like curiosity, for example - or, more appropriately, the beginnings of rapture, which, in this case, made themselves evident in the wideness of her eyes, in their feigned concentration on the dirt road underneath her feet, and, especially, in the way they pushed her black pupils and brown irides into the beautiful almond-shaped corners of her lids, following that mysterious image, that masked rider, your father, dressed in black body armor, who kept watching her pass him along the side of the road as he stood waiting in the fallow field, galloping forward every time she turned back her head.

– Verse 266 from the chapter called Security

"Look at me," she whined. "I'm the most misproportioned woman on the planet. I've got huge Martian feet; short, stubby Japanese legs; a gigantic forehead; no chin."

– Verse 794 from the chapter called Security

"You don't have a huge, shiny forehead."

"Your forehead's not shiny!"

– Verses 851-852 from the chapter called Bohemia

Forgive me, child, when I say that I found her, at first, only somewhat attractive. Her forehead was huge; her chin, nonexistent. Only later did I fully realize how well the two complemented each other - it required a sophisticated taste, one which I did not yet possess - but, nevertheless, even the most sophisticated taste would have required some sort of refinement to accept her beauty for what it was: complex and unrepentant. Unearthly was the best word. She was half-Japanese and half-Martian, which made her broad and narrow at the same time. It gave her a short and straight and yet upturned nose that anywhere else would've been ugly, but which on her was essential to the whole. It was a package of such unexpected brilliance that the parts were too bold to allow for quick and easy appreciation of the angelic splendor that shone from within and without. She was light. She was truly an angel. Hers was the most serene and gentle complexion I would ever come to value, and, at first, it struck me as rather odd. It was square and round, flat and curved, with almond-shaped eyes whose lids folded around her eyeballs - they were beautiful eyes. I came to love them with all my heart. What a strange and complex face your mother had.

– Verse 442 from the chapter called Bohemia

"I look nothing like her," said Zoe. "She's got the smallest forehead I've ever seen." Jesus laughed.

– Verse 819 from the chapter called Security