smiles

She often lies, and either smiles or yells at the press as she does so.

He’s like the people he cares for: After he explains the limited options he can offer an older woman with Parkinson’s disease, she smiles and says, “I’ll just be tough.”

“I am trying to relish his occasional smiles, his rare hellos.”

There is a certain kind of violence to this kind of niceness—a ferocity to the smiles and a brutal dedication to keeping all disagreement and unpleasantness hidden away.

And that kind of niceness—the wide smiles, the generosity—it can hide deeper resentments that go back generations, that will snap at you like a stick to keep you in line.