From the English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje:
when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colours, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. for him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. he's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. one can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of light.
everything is gathered by him as part of an altering harmony. he sees her in differing hours and locations that alter her voice or nature, even her beauty, the way the background power of the sea cradles of governs the fate of lifeboats.
