“There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in ill humor and near knives.”

“She could look at him forever. She could spend her life watching him just blink and breathe that near to her.”

“Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye--with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad.”

“When she went out she used to wear a lot of eye shadow, which married with the sulky way she sometimes held her mouth to give her a characteristic bruised look; a look that subtly made one want to bruise her more.”

“And then she closed her eyes, and they could no longer touch her. She no longer embraced what they threatened. Linh was there, and when she reached for his hand, her own had become stiff and brittle, her arms become branches, and from her kees to her groin to her belly to her breasts came a covering, an armor of gnarled bark, and her hair, when she reached for it, had th easpect of leaves. She opened her eyes, alive, and she turned to look deeply and without fear into her boy soldier's face......the leader came and knelt down to look at Helen, and her mouth so full of liquid she gagged, spitting out Buddha and fragments of stone. The man picked up the small medallion and stared at her in wonder.”

“Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Anthony turned to look at her. It was difficult for him to discern her expression with the mask she was wearing, but he could see her eyes, and there was something so honest, yet desperate, hidden there that he found it impossible to look away. She was mesmerizing, and whatever reason she had for being there, he knew that it was vitally important to her, that attending the ball was not without risk.”