“You know how it is. A three-hundred dollar suit doesn’t knock your eye
out. A Ming vase doesn’t shriek for attention. But the ultimate beauty,
the perfection, is there; and you’ll always see it if you look long
enough, see it and recognize it, regardless of whether you’ve ever seen
it before.
    Even if you’ve caught so much crap in your eyes that
you’re half-blind in one and can’t see out of the other . . .”

—Jim Thompson, WIld Town, 1957. The ellipses are his.