I was not weak; I did not cry. But it hurt me, more in a kind of refreshing, thrilling way, than a kind of pain that would cripple me and send me away crying. My...

There is, in fact, no safeword for chemical burns under one’s fingernails.

You can tell a lot from a person’s nails. When a life starts to unravel, they’re among the first to go.

Dead men’s fingernails make lovely shallow-grave shovels.

I cried out at the sudden visitation of pain, everyone in a silent church standing in a rustle of suits and dresses to bend back their longest fingernail.

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails