I think he just gets like this sometimes. Like he needs to pull away. I think of it like winter. During winter, it isn't that the sun is gone (or cheating on you with another planet). You can still see it in the sky. It's just farther away.

And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him. Something always did.

I take something that happened to me in 1983, and I make it happen to somebody else in 1943. I pick my life apart that way, try to understand it better by writing straight through it.

You win when no one finds you, even if they're not looking.

Maybe he was Filipino. Was that in Asia? Probably. Asia's out-of-control huge.

That's not the point," he said. "What kind of creep would I be if I let my girl carry something heavy while I walked along, swinging my arms?" Your girl? "The kind that respects my wishes," she said. "And my strength, and my... arms." Levi grinned some more. Because he wasn't taking her seriously. "I have a lot of respect for your arms. I like how they're attached to the rest of you.

In some cases, she was actively trying not to make friends, though she usually stopped short of being rude. (Uptight, tense, and mildly misanthropic? Yes. Rude? No.)