“I always get muscle aches in my eyes after a few hours of reading," she said. "Doesn't matter what. The closeness does it. All these words in your face, one at a time and filling your periphery. I love reading, but there's a limit."There are times," she went on, "when I don't leave my apartment for days. I read for hours without a break and feel like all I want to do is stand in a field and look as far as I can in any direction. I want a view, but I don't want to see anything. I just want something like an eye stretch.""Why not just shut your eyes?" I asked. "What's the difference?""Closing my eyes is too much like nearness, like reading. It's black and it's in your face, sort of crowding you. Gazing down a prairie road stretches me and the muscles in my eyes. I don't necessarily want to see anything. Just look out.”

“I dream in tunnel vision, I think. I remember in tunnel vision, I think. The question remains, when my tunnel vision goes, as it will very soon, what will I remember seeing? How will I remember?All I can do is write it down and keep writing. How else can I hold this picture, this life, or this face together? The view from here is of a boy with a softball, ready to let it go. His is an ironic gift from the past, as if the young me is aiming at the old, saying, "Here, buddy, let me help you with that." I wanted to let the ball fly at my lens, whatever was left of it.”

“Although I was fine, that night didn't sit well with me for the rest of our trip. Something had, in the end, been taken from me, something very small. A strange kind of dignity, maybe. In its place remained an alien resentment. I know it seems daft, really, but how does one get justice for not having been mugged? It's a real question, although not a high priority. For what it's worth, I learned this much - even commonplace violence and social dangers can't give me a fair shake. Discrimination feels like discrimination, even when it's for the best. My generation has been so socialized into our rights and so schooled away from discriminations of any kind, I didn't know how to be thankful. Thank you for stereotyping me. Thanks for excluding me from your violence, although I'm a relatively affluent tourist. Gratitude for being spared is something of a double bind. I wanted to lose. I wanted to lose like everybody else in order to keep that bit of dignity.”

“When I close my eyes, all I ever see is her face. There is no place or time without her. Where I am doesn't matter when we're apart. All I want is her.”

“You don't need this prep but I'm going to give it to you anyway. I can tell, I don't know any of you that well, but I can see it in your faces that and some of you have faces that remind me of what my face looked like when I was younger. I see some of you young people out there and I remember how hard it is to be young. And I remember how hard it is to be rejected the first time when you're young. And so what I want you to do is close your eyes. And I can see you, so don't cheat me here. Close those eyes of yours. Put 'em, real tight. And I want you to imagine the first person who broke you heart. The first person that didn't like you back, the first person that said shitty stuff about you. The first person that dumped you. The first person that changed their phone number because you called them 62 times in one day. The first person that didn't know how good you were and they missed you, they passed you by. Imagine that person and then I want you to sing at the top of your fucking lungs. I want you to sing. I want to heal that with you right now. (sings): Look me in the eye and tell me you dont find me attractive.Look me in the heart and tell me that you wont go. Look me in the eye and promise no love is like our love look me in the heart and unbreak broken it wont happen.”

“Name me. Gaze into my eyes, study my smile and dimples and tell me what you see. I look like an Emma. I look like an Amy. I look like a Katherine. I look like a Kathryn. I look like your best friend's sister, your sister's best friend. Introduce me. Yell for me. Let me run away and call me back. Run your fingers through my hair and whisper my name. Call me whatever you want; it's just a name, after all.”

“It's kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to a point where none of it seems real. Well, sometimes I can do that, but I don't need an hour in front of a mirror. It just happens very fast, and things start to slip away. And I just open my eyes, and I see nothing. And then I start to breathe really hard trying to see something, but I can't. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it scares me.”