This paper summarizes most of what Sign linguists know about the function of the eyes in American Sign Language discourse. Here, "eyes" is taken to cover both opening and closing of the eyes and looking in a particular direction, referred to as the signer's "gaze-direction." Evidence is presented demonstrating that a signer's gaze can be lexically determined or function in emphasis placement, as a noun modifier, a pronominal reference, an indicator of a direct quotation narrative, or as evidence of a constituent boundary. Closing the eyes may give greater emphasis to a manual sign. Finally, it is hypothesized that the location of blinks in ASL discourse corresponds to the interactants' organization of the communication and may be a fruitful source of information in locating and describing the syntactic constituents of American Sign Language. (Author)