First love dazzles

Once, when I raptured in a violet glow given off by the Queen of the World, my father asked me why, and I thought he was crazy not to see. Of course I know now she was a mouse-haired, freckle-nosed, scabby-kneed little girl with a voice like a bat and the loving kindness of a gila monster, but then she lighted up the landscape and me.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America  (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 158 (orig. published 1962)