The aesthetic perfectionist, who spent hours slaving over a sentence - Richard Yates

One advantage of the very low lighting in this room, he'd decided, was that it could make almost any girl look like a million dollars.

Oh, Colby said. I see. What d'you see? You really aren't much of a conversationalist, you know that? You 'see', What can you possibly 'see' from what little I've told you?

From the day of his talkative, overconfident arrival at Irving he had failed and failed at learning how not to behave like a jerk; and everybody knew what kind of life a jerk could expect at prep school.