“He was ugly on the outside, and once you got past that you found the true ugliness on the inside. And then below that ugliness you found a vulnerable person who desperately needed to be seen and touched and known as a human phenomenon. And above all, you wanted nothing to do with that, because once you touched the source of his loneliness, there would be no end to it, and even if you took it upon yourself to appease this unappeasable need, he would eventually decide to revenge himself against a world that held him at bay, and there would be no better target for this revenge than you, precisely because you were the person who'd dared to draw the nearest.”