“Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar.”

“Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.”

“O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the Devil!”

“What matter the colour of the collar around a man's neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?”

“The collar came first, and when Guerin drew it from his neck he felt the collar's absence like a lightness, his spine unfurling, his shoulders settling.Like a lie, cracking and dropping from him.”

“You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.”