“I loved the idea that people could discover things. That you could be the person to see something first. Or see something that nobody else had been able to.”

“Eventually, a governess realized I needed spectacles. When I first put them on my face, I can’t even tell you . . . it was like a miracle.” “Finally seeing properly?”“Knowing I wasn’t hopeless.” A knot formed in her throat. “I’d believed there was something incurably wrong with me, you see. But suddenly, I could see the world clear. And not only the parts in the distance, but the bits within my own reach. I could focus on a page. I could explore the things around me, discover whole worlds beneath my fingertips. I could be good at something, for once.”

“If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.' 'No doubt a thing o' haunting beauty but i came for something else.”

“Words were not just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.”

“She was so beautiful tonight he knew he would die of it. He hated that anyone else should see it. He wished it were something he alone could see. And he knew he was alone, that nobody saw it but him. And he knew that everyone could see it. And still no one could but him.”

“These things end,” she said. “They always end. Nobody marries their first love. First love is justthat. First. It’s implied that something else will follow.”