“A surgeon would never hesitate to amputate a rotting hand, no matter how faithfully it had served its owner in the past.”

“For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the literature of any age or country.”

“Thus painting itself had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what money could buy. And the visual desirability of what can be bought lies in its tangibility, in how it will reward the touch, the hand, of the owner.”

“I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncallused hand-a hand never dirtied by serving-and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.”

“The faithful dog is kicked, and no matter how the spider weaves, he is never loved.”

“I was thinking about his hands on me. Nobody had ever treated me like that. Not ever. But now they had. And how was I ever going to forget it? I would never. I would never.”