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

“I looked at her and she looked at me and we weren’t walking. We were just standing there, and her eyes were so interesting. Not in the usual way of being interesting, like the extremely blue or extremely big of flanked by obscenely long lashes or anything. What interested me about the Duke’s eyes was the complexity of the color- she always said they looked like the bottom of trash-can bins, a swirl of green and brown and yellow but she was underselling herself she always undersold herself. Christ it was hard to unthink”

“But I could always tell in her eyes if she got really pissed at me, and her eyes were still pretty smiley”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid.”I laughed pretty hard, hard enough that I felt where the chest tube had been.“You laugh because it’s true,” he said.I laughed again.“It’s true, isn’t it!”

“It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.”

“To tell you the truth, I prefer just your average, run-of-the-mill, everyday jackass with his glass-eyed, slack-jawed obliviousness to the guys who try to hijack my cool by reading poetry and listening to halfway-good music. I worked hard for my cool. I got my ass kicked in middle school for my cool. I came by this shit honestly.”

“The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.”