The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

Beautiful people make even those of us who proudly consider ourselves unmoved by another’s appearance dumb with admiration and fear and delight, and struck by the profound, enervating awareness of how inadequate we are, how nothing, not intelligence or education or money, can usurp or overpower or deny beauty.

There is no one more disappointed than the pugilist whose sparring partner forfeits the fight.