“Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.”

“All the action adventure girls have red hair," he said. "Whenever it is an independent girl, not a sidekick person, when she has her own mind or does as good as the guys, she has red hair.”

“I imagine that the goddess of Love has come down from Olympus to visit a mortal. So as not to die of cold in this modern world of ours, she wraps her sublime body in great heavy furs and warms her feet on the prostrate body of her lover. I imagine the favorite of this beautiful despot, who is whipped when his mistress grows tired of kissing him, and whose love only grows more intense the more he is trampled underfoot. I shall call the picture "Venus in Furs”

“All good looks are a snare. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.”

“I can't help thinking of Jackson Pollock, who poured, splattered and lashed the canvass with strings of paint. His process was about snaring not only a vision, but the moment the vision occurred to him. The paint becomes a net cast around something too fast to be caught. The bare spaces between the net's strands are as significant as the strands themselves because they hint at what can't be painted, can't be described.”

“A beautiful white silk scarf was around her neck, tucked below the fur collar. Her lips were well painted into a bright red cupid’s bow. Cute as hell I always told myself, with a tinge of regret. She had a steady girlfriend.”