"Seen from inside the bar, the avenue, the stores opposite, the street glimpsed going off at right angles, the trapezoid of sky visible above the low… - John Crowley

There were the eyebrows, for one thing. He was convinced that the single eyebrow which some, but not all of them, had inherited from Violet had something to do with it.

God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.

But Max said: “Last summer I spent working these peace booths at state fairs. We’d go around in this bigole pickup with this knocked-down booth in the back and boxes of literature. People’d come up to me and hear me talking about colonialism or the bomb or who was responsible for the Cold War, and they’d start railing on Communists. Communists, these damn Communists. And I’d say hey, hold on now, you’re talkin’ about my mother. They’d look at me like I’d turned into a Russky before their very eyes. It certainly shut ’em up.” He smiled to remember, delighted. “They were good people. Country people. Didn’t want to say anything bad about a fellow’s mom.” Saul