“Love them all," said Renoir. "That is the secret, young man. Love them all." The painter let go of his arm and shrugged. "Then, even if your paintings are shit, you will have loved them all.”

“'Paint only what you see,' his hero Millet had admonished.'Imagination is a burden to a painter,' Auguste Renoir had told him. 'Painters are craftsmen, not storytellers. Paint what you see.'Ah, but what they hadn't said, hadn't warned him about, was how much you could see.”

“I love you above all things, even pie.”

“And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?”

“He preferred to not think of his mother as having hips. He preferred to not think of her as a woman at all, more as a traveling mass of loving annoyance - a mother-shaped storm that inhabited the bakery and, in bringing rain for the growth of the living things over which she hovered, didn't mind scaring the piss out of them with a few thunderbolts from time to time.”

“The Holy Mother has many faces, but you know it's her from her blue cloak. She is said to be the spirit in all women." "Look, here she is naked and the baby Jesus has wings, " said Lucien."That is not the Holy Mother, that's Venus and that's not Jesus, that is Cupid, the Roman god of love.""Wouldn't she have the spirit of the Holy Mother as well?""No, she is a pagan myth.""What about Maman? Is the spirit of the Holy Mother in her?""No, Lucien, your mother is also a pagan myth. Come, look at these paintings of wrestlers.”

“She had a lot of nerve signing her note "Love." [...] But she did sign it that way: "Love." What did that mean? Did she mean it, or was it habit? She probably signed all of her letters with "Love." Dear Insured, We are sorry but your policy will not pay for your barium enema as it was done for recreational purposes. Love, Jody. Claims Dept...Maybe not.”