“(He) looked directly into his own eyes, as though his eyes were neutral territory, a no man’s land in a private war against narcissism.”

“His mood-ring eyes were neutral gray, summer clouds that threatened no rain.”

“His brown eyes were set back in deep hollows, as though he looked out from a place of shadow on all the verities of the world.”

“A man’s destiny is not in the eyes of others. It’s in his own. And that, my young friend, is as good as any bank note.”

“I worked hard to meet his eyes, even though they were the kind of pretty that’s hard to look at..”

“He is not simply looking into the mirror because he is transfixed by what he sees. Rather, the artist’s success depends as much as anything on his powers of detachment, on de-narcissizing himself… Freud… studied his own dreams not because he was a “narcissist,” but because he was a student of dreams. And whose were at once the least and most accessible of dreams, if not his own?”