“He really was beautiful. I know boys aren’t supposed to be, but he was.”

“Well, although I do not suppose that either of us know anything really beautiful & good, I am better off than he is- for he knows nothing & thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.”

“This boy," he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, "was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty's opposite.""Are you more cynical now, then?" she asked him."Cynical," he frowned, "No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful...”

“Nate: “And,” he said, “boys at twelve aren’t exactly slick with the ladies.”Ruby: “’Slick with the ladies’?” I said. “Are you twelve?”

“But when he smiles? Really smiles, it’s perfect. Like toothpaste commercial, boy-next-door beauty that makes it really hard to be pissed at him.”

“I will never see him again. Never know why he let me go. Never learn if he really whispered what I think he did. Beautiful.”