“The Girl With Many EyesOne day in the parkI had quite a surprise.I met a girlwho had many eyes.She was really quite pretty(and also quite shocking!)and I noticed she had a mouth,so we ended up talking.We talked about flowers,and her poetry classes,and the problems she'd haveif she ever wore glasses.It's great to know a girlwho has so many eyes,but you really get wetwhen she breaks down and cries.”

“She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things,”

“He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him.~ Stephen speaking of Rachael”

“And a blank page was quite beautiful on its own, she'd found. There were already so many words, so many voices in the world. She flinched at contributing to the cacophony.”

“She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.”

“She pulled back, but not abruptly. His eyes were the darkest indigo blue that she had ever seen. She let a faint smile curl on her lips. "You inquire how many kisses of yours would be enough, and more to satisfy me," she said, and was startled to hear a husky catch in her voice. "As many as the grains of Libyan sand that lie between hot Jupiter's oracle… as many…" She paused. The look in his eye had made her forget what she was saying. What came after hot oracle!He didn't look sardonic now, but truly surprised. She had to leave. This was all entirely too intimate and uncomfortable."Alas," she said, gathering up her skirts again and turning toward the rockslide. "I have quite forgotten the next line, so we shall have to delay this learned discussion." He was at her shoulder in a moment, helping her over the stones."As many as the stars," he said, conversationally, as if they were talking of gardening, or Romans, or any number of polite topics. "As many as the stars, when the night is still, gazing down on secret human desires.”