“I'm half listening. I'm interested in other things. How certain people devastate you with their face. How it hurts to see them. A certain kind of face does it—a different kind for all of us. My foster mother Mina was obsessed with the man who ended up killing her, Phil, and his slummy face had done it to her, because it doesn't have to be attractive or even remotely decent. It's only happened once to me so far, and it was my physics teacher, who told me my face had done that to him. When your faces do it to each other, that's sublime.”