Arms spread, festooned with blinking insects, he imagined that he was an airplane, or a rock star, the deeper beauty of the gift eluding him.

Chris Abani wrote that, in The Virgin of Flames.

I tried to post the quote on Twitter, but it's one character too long - or, three characters too long, if you count the quotation marks.

And I'm glad. Better to have it here. People read their Twitter feeds pretty fast, which I think would make the deeper beauty too elusive.