“She arched and farted like Mona Lisa if you really looked at her and for good fruitarian measure.”

“Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.”

“Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.”

“Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.”

“Well, now I felt horrible. I'd marred perfectly good ass cheeks for no reason. It was as if I'd sneezed on the Mona Lisa.”

“Instead, she sat there, smiling that small, small inscrutable smile, like Mona Lisa herself, although I must say that until that moment, I'd never found Mona Lisa's smile particularly interesting or even particularly a smile. Looking at Lake, I understood what probably everyone else already knows about the woman in that painting: we are drawn to her not because of what the smile gives us but because it gives us nothing. We are waiting to get past the smile. We are waiting--we've spent centuries waiting--for the woman to speak.”