“Do you see these hands?" Jo said, holding them up. "These were made for caressing handsome men and meant to be adorned with pretty nails and diamond rings. They're not made for paint rollers and paint splatter and that kind of manual labor.”

“Their poses are all different but the face is the same. Painted from memory in scene after scene is the fresh-faced beauty. Kate.It's the bargain I've made with myself. If I can't caress her body with my hands, I paint it with my brushes. Use my fingers to trace her lines.”

“Sage,” Adrian declared. “These hands don’t do manual labor.”

“The first time you view a house, you see how pretty the paint is and buy it. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It's the same with men.”

“She opened her eyes once again and let them drift across the scene laid out before her like a page from a storybook. Inky blackness hung above them as though painted in impasto in an opaque Prussian Blue. The impression it gave was of a sky hand-crafted out of felt with a pearl of a moon and a generous dusting of diamonds sprinkled on for the stars. A night dreams were made of.”

“One young woman's tribute describes unwrapping her cadaver's hands and being brought up short by the realization that the nails were painted pink. "The pictures in the anatomy atlas did not show nail polish", she wrote. "Did you choose the color? Did you think that I would see it? I wanted to tell you about the inside of your hands. I want you to know you are always there when I see patients. When I palpate an abdomen, yours are the organs I imagine. When I listen to a heart, I recall holding your heart.”