'What is beauty?'

'Beauty's...'

She relished my stumpedness. I wanted to impress her with a clever definition, but I kept crashing into beauty's something that's beautiful.

I admitted, 'It's difficult.'

'Difficult? Impossible! Beauty is immune to definition. When beauty is present, you know. Winter sunrise in dirty Toronto, one's new lover in an old cafe, sinister magpies on a roof. But is the beauty of these made? No. Beauty is here, that is all. Beauty is.'

'But you just chose natural things. How about paintings, or music? We say, "The potter makes a beautiful vase," don't we?'

'We say, we say. Be careful of say. Words say, "You have labelled this abstract, this concept, therefore you have captured it." No. They lie. Or not lie, but are maladroit. Clumsy. Your potter has made the vase, yes, but has not made the beauty. Only an object where it resides. Until the case is dropped and breaks. (Which) is the ultimate fate of every vase.'

(Black Swan Green, David Mitchell, p.186-187)