Blue And Gray Quotes & Sayings

It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The Shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There was something infinitely impressive about the man, tall, slender, gray-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken. He had the looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels. There was something so basically kind and gentle about him, yet something powerful as well. The aura of a highly trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther ... to do more ... to fight time ... to conquer odds beyond hope ... to steal back just one life ... one man ... one woman ... one child ... one more. And often he won. Often. But not always. And that irked him. More than that, it pained him. It was the cause for the lines beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him. It wasn't enough that he wrought miracles almost daily. He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save them all, and there was no way he could. — Danielle Steel

Paint in blue and black ... sometimes gray - the colors of night - occasionally I surprise you with a mustard yellow, but then, I am a poet ... — John Geddes

In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother's old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm.
... And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks.
... She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory. — Rebecca McNutt

Blue water extends in rows of gentle ripples to a thin line of barely visible cottonwoods on the far side. The wind dies to a whisper and it's quiet, almost perfectly still except for the snap of grasshoppers leaping from the weeds. To the west the mountains rise suddenly, almost violently from the sandy brown of the plains, layered silhouettes of blue and green and gray rising to a turquoise sky. My heart is filled with the beauty of it all. — Kristen Iversen

Have either of you seen your mother "
"Yeah " Ethan said and my heart actually skipped a beat.
But I should have known Ethan was joking. "Slim lady. Blue eyes and a gray pageboy " he continued his eyes glistening in appreciation of his own humor. "Answers to the name 'Mom'. — Rachel Vincent

All of the films that I've made are about the country I live in and grew up in ... And I think if you're going to put an artist's eye to it, you're going to put a critical eye to it. I've always been interested in the gray area that exists between the black and white, or the red and blue, and that's where complexity lies. — Robert Redford

In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace.
Will look at her, slow and hard, then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa."
She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing if for the first time-the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when he said, softly, "Will."
"Yes?" Amusement glittered his eyes.
With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question. — Cassandra Clare

The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace - and even whole-being rejuvenation - by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky. — Eric Maisel

I have an African gray parrot; her name is Eli. We thought she was a boy. And a blue-streaked lory named Marco. He's 10. And a yellow and green parakeet, Petey. He's very cute, but he's getting old. — Roz Chast

They're still looking at him," she said to Magnus under her breath. "At Will, I mean."
"Of course they are," said Magnus. His eyes reflected light like a cat's as they surveyed the room. "Look at him. The face of a bad angel and eyes like the night sky in Hell. He's very pretty, and vampires like that. I can't say I mind either." Magnus grinned. "Black hair and blue eyes are my favorite combination."
Tessa reached up to pat Camille's pale blond curls.
Magnus shrugged. "Nobody's perfect. — Cassandra Clare

Because of this genuine love for horses, the beautiful wild-horse panorama beneath Pan swelled his heart. He gazed and gazed. From near to far the bands dotted the green-gray valley. Far away this valley floor shaded into blue. Near at hand the colors were easily distinguishable. Blacks and bays, whites and chestnuts, pintos that resembled zebras dotted this wild pasture land. The closest band to where Pan and Blinky stood could not have been more than a mile distant, in a straight line. A shiny black stallion was the leader of this herd. He was acting strangely, too, trotting forward and halting, tossing his head and long black mane. — Zane Grey

In mine, in space, in city and sky, we have lived our lives in fear. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Today, fear only that we fail. We cannot. We stand upon the edge of darkness holding the lone torch left to man. That torch will not go out. Not while I draw breath. Not while your hearts beat in your chests. Not while our ships yet have menace in them. Let others dream. Let others sing. We chosen few are the fire of our people." I beat my chest. "We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And today we reclaim the lives that have been stolen from us. We build the future we were promised. — Pierce Brown

When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl
not Frances, not anyone I've ever known
and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me
that one about being chartless
and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me
that one about the little lamb that made thee
and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door. — J.D. Salinger

Every time I look down on this timeless town
Whether blue or gray be her skies.
Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears,
More and more do I realize:
I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.
I love Paris every moment,
Every moment of the year.
I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near. — Cole Porter

Hmmm," he said, "Lauren Elizabeth Danner.Elizabeth is a beautiful name and so is Lauren. They suit you."
Unable to endure the sweet torment of having him flirt with her, Lauren said repressively, "I was named after two maiden aunts.One of them had a squint and the other had warts."
Nick ignored that and continued aloud. "Color of eyes,blue." He regarded her over the top of the file, his gray eyes intimate and teasing. "They are definitely blue.A man could lose himself in those eyes of yours-they're gorgeous."
"My right eye used to wobble unless I wore my glasses," Lauren informed him blithely. "They had to operate on it."
"A little girl with wobbly blue eyes and glasses on her nose," he reflected with a slow grin. "I'll bet you were cute."
"I looked studious,not cute. — Judith McNaught

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There's the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There's the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I'm the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don't get me wrong, I love - at least until I don't. — Padma Lakshmi

If you want to slice into America, it's pretty red, white, and blue in terms of how it goes about things, but there's a gray area there, and I've always been interested in where things are complicated. — Robert Redford

He looked up through long, wet lashes and narrowed crystal-blue eyes at her. With a final swipe of the towel to his head, he bunched it up in his fist.

The gray ball was sent hurling in the air, spiraled once, and hit her boss square in the face.

Jerry sputtered, and swatted away the offensive material.
Keane "Boom-Yay" O'Shea KNOCK OUT — Michele Mannon

I turned to face him, and when I saw him standing there in the pale, blue-gray sunlight, my breath caught somewhere beneath my ribs. The boy was probably my age, and about my height, too. — Danielle Paige

That's right, said Door. Her cheek lightly grazed and her dirty reddish hair was tangled; tangled but not matted. And her eyes ... Richard realized that he could not tell what color her eyes were. They were not blue, or green, or brown, or gray; they reminded him of fire opals: there were burning greens and blues, and even reds and yellows that vanished and glinted as she moved. — Neil Gaiman

We chosen few are the fire of our people." I beat my chest. "We are not Red, not Blue or Gold or Gray or Obsidian. We are humanity. We are the tide. And — Pierce Brown

June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way. — Gretel Ehrlich

When I wake up earlier than you and you
are turned to face me, face
on the pillow and hair spread around,
I take a chance and stare at you,
amazed in love and afraid
that you might open your eyes and have
the daylights scared out of you.
But maybe with the daylights gone
you'd see how much my chest and head
implode for you, their voices trapped
inside like unborn children fearing
they will never see the light of day.
The opening in the wall now dimly glows
its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes
and go downstairs to put the coffee on. — Ron Padgett

The wind pounced on them hard. It had blown some of the cloud away and stretched the rest across the sky like rags on a loom to make a rug. A blue and white and gray rug like that would b pretty, thought Arry. But how do I know that? Do I know it? — Pamela Dean

BEANNACHT For Josie On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the gray window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the curach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life. — John O'Donohue

Look - here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course: some receivers will see a cloth which is turkey red, some will see one that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To color-blind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome - my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out. — Stephen King

After each outing, I spent hours looking through a huge volume called The Fishes of the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea. Among the fish that I think I may have spotted were: tiger sharks, lemon sharks, gray reef sharks, blue-spine unicorn fish, yellow boxfish, spotted boxfish, conspicuous angelfish, Barrier Reef anemonefish, Barrier Reef chromis, minifin parrotfish, Pacific longnose parrotfish, somber sweetlips, fourspot herring, yellowfin tuna, common dolphinfish, deceiver fangblenny, yellow spotted sawtail, barred rabbitfish, blunt-headed wrasse, and striped cleaner wrasse. Reefs are — Elizabeth Kolbert

I look into his gray-blue dying eyes. We're staring at each other, showing each other our last looks, the faces we'll take with us into eternity, and I'm thinking how I wish I knew him better, how I wish we'd had a life together, wishing my father wasn't such a complete and utter goddamn mystery to me ... — Daniel Wallace

Most e-mails sent in the mid-nineties tended to be long and letter-like: they began and ended with traditional greetings - the ones we'd all previously used on paper - and they were keen to describe the surrounding scene, as if the new medium had made of everybody a writer. ("I'm typing this just by the window, looking out to blue-gray sea, where three gulls are diving into the water.") — Zadie Smith

It was a perfectly normal May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide. The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray mouse," he said laughing rather pityingly. "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared. — Diana Wynne Jones

Not far away lay the big cannons that had held Ulysses Grant at bay for fifty siege days while the citizens of the town ate rat flesh and clung to their long-cherished beliefs. How many had died in that lost cause? Dr. Tarver wondered. Fifty thousand casualties at Gettysburg alone, and for what? To free the slaves who built this house? To preserve the Union? Had Stonewall Jackson died to create a nation of couch potatoes ignorant of their own history and incapable of simple mathematics? If those brave soldiers in blue and gray had seen what lay in the future, they would have laid down their muskets and walked home to their farms. — Greg Iles

Blue said, "I told you she would start singing."
But the Gray Man just raised his eyebrows. "Weapons and poetry go hand in hand. — Maggie Stiefvater

This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome - there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. — Edward Abbey

The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor. Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth's long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness. — Cormac McCarthy

She wore a steel gray business suit and under the jacket a dark blue shirt and a man's tie of lighter shade. The edges of the folded handkerchief in the breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread. — Raymond Chandler

There is a certain shade of red brick
a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue
that is my childhood in St.Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It's also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel. — Harold Brodkey

Bay's room was the first one at the top of the staircase. It was painted a dove gray that turned peacock blue after dark, as if the room absorbed the warmth of daylight and radiated with it at night. — Sarah Addison Allen

The sunset was a massive canvas of gold and orange, green and rose, gray and indigo and blue. It reminded him of beaches on the North American west coast, except there were no vendors clogging the place and no advertising drones muttering about the joys of commerce. — James S.A. Corey

As she said this, she tossed him one of her blue-and-gray-checked tea towels to use as an apron. She was wearing a blue summer dress and tucked her towel-apron into her red belt. Today he could see that her blond hair was tinged with silver at the temples and that the former confusion and terror had left her eyes.
Soon the windowpanes had misted up; the gas flames were hissing under pots and pans; the white wine, shallots and cream sauce was simmering; and in a heavy pan the olive oil was browning potatoes sprinkled with rosemary and salt.
They were chatting away as if they'd known each other for years and had simply lost touch for a while. About Carla Bruni, and about how male sea horses carried their young around in a pouch on their stomachs. They talked about fashion and about the trend for salt with added flavorings, and of course they gossiped about their neighbors. — Nina George

Her eyes bothered him most. Unlike the Kai, hers were layers of opaque white, blue ringed in gray and black pinpoint centers that expanded or contracted with the light. The first time he'd witnessed that reaction in a human, all the hairs on his nape stood straight up. That, and the way the contrasting colors made it easy to see the eyes move in their sockets gave the impression they weren't body parts but entities unto themselves living as parasites inside their hosts' skulls.

He was used to seeing the frantic eye-rolling in a frightened horse but not a person. If the parasite impression didn't repulse him so much, he'd think humans lived in a constant state of hysterical terror. — Grace Draven

He didn't reply but by then she'd found something else to occupy her attention. His eyes.
Though she'd expected them to be as serviceable as the rest of him, they were a smoky blue-gray fringed in dark lashes. Pretty eyes. Even when he stared her down like a cop might a perp. And not just any perp. One who was heavily armed and an imminent flight risk. — Cari Quinn

Sophie ignored her and went to take a seat. The only two open were between Tristan and Jackson. Lilli had fallen headfirst in like with Jackson's auburn hair and deep brown eyes, so Sophie knew she'd have to sit next to Tristan. Her heart stuttered. Tristan's gray eyes warmed when Sophie took the seat next to him. Her gaze roamed over his face. The square jaw, full lips. His brown hair was mussed, like he'd just woken up. When his lips tilted up at one corner heat rushed to her face. "Come on. We need to get this started. I've got better things to do." Morgan's eyes sparked at Tristan and Sophie. Aidan, the last of the study group, whistled. "You're hot when you're jealous." Morgan's blue eyes turned to ice. She glared at him. He smiled lazily at her. — Samantha Long

Life is calmness with squabbling,
accumulating traditions and self-consciousness.
elaborate meals, medicine, law,
pretty pictures unspoiled,
rocking the cradle and holding the hammer,
impressive skies of gray and blue,
believing in what we can't settle,
the mystery of iniquity,
the absolutely sincere predictions of fools,
lighter moods like these. — Brian D'Ambrosio

She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle. — Truman Capote

Patience. I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like the sun we could see for a few short morning hours. Too soon the sun rose high in the sky & disappeared from view, leaving us bereft and staring at blue. — V.C. Andrews

There's a chill in the air that feels like winter, or at least the start of it. This is my least-favorite time of year because everything dies or goes to sleep, and there's too much death and stillness, and the sky turns gray for so long, you think it will never be blue again. — Jennifer Niven

The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own. — James Salter

Tessa craned her head back to look at Will. "You know that feeling," she said, "when you are reading a book, and you know that it is going to be a tragedy; you can feel the cold and darkness coming, see the net drawing tight around the characters who live and breathe on the pages. But you are tied to the story as if being dragged behind a carriage and you cannot let go or turn the course aside." His blue eyes were dark with understanding - of course Will would understand - and she hurried on. "I feel now as if the same is happening, only not to characters on a page but to my own beloved friends and companions. I do not want to sit by while tragedy comes for us. I would turn it aside, only I struggle to discover how that might be done."
"You fear for Jem," Will said.
"Yes," she said. "And I fear for you, too."
"No," Will said, hoarsely. "Don't waste that on me, Tess. — Cassandra Clare

The greatest enthusiasts for Civil War history and memory often displace complicated consequences by endlessly focusing on the contest itself. We sometimes lift ourselves out of historical time, above the details, and render the war safe in a kind of national Passover offering as we view a photograph of the Blue and Gray veterans shaking hands across the stone walls at Gettysburg. Deeply embedded in an American mythology of mission, and serving as a mother lode of nostalgia for antimodernists and military history buffs, the Civil War remains very difficult to shuck from its shell of sentimentalism. — David W. Blight

Blue doesn't desbribe loss. Grief robs the world of color. Turns it heavy and gray. — Ellery Adams

Red-heeled shoes and silk stockings clocked in black. Gray satin breeches with silver knee buckles. Snowy linen, with Brussels lace six inches deep at cuff and jabot. The coat, a masterpiece in heavy gray with blue satin cuffs and crested silver buttons, hung behind the door, awaiting its turn. — Diana Gabaldon

The night was fading. It was too early to be called dawn yet, but Taylor could just make out the outline of Will's weary, unshaven face. His deep blue eyes were the only color in the gray world of rain and shadows.
Will leaned in, and his mouth covered Taylor's, rough but sweet, his tongue seeking Taylor's. Taylor opened willingly to that kiss, forgetting for a second his scratched, scraped hands and the rain running down the back of his neck. They kissed a lot these days, especially for men who had never been much for kissing. Taylor had become expert in all Will's kisses, from the hungry, lustful kisses that always made his own cock rise so fast it hurt, to the tender, almost cherishing kisses that Will generally saved for when he thought Taylor was sleeping. That dawn kiss beneath the pine trees rippled through him like an electric shock, a reminder that, tired, wet, and lost as they might be, so long as they were together, they were all right. — Josh Lanyon

In winter, the air is clear enough to drink, and your eyes can travel many hundreds of miles until they reach the green of the near hills, the blue-gray beyond them, and then the snow peaks far away, which rise in the sky with the sun, and remain suspended there, higher than imaginable, changing color and shape through the day. Every hour, they come closer, their massive flanks clearly visible, plumes of cloud smoking from their tips. After the last of the daylight is gone, at dusk, the peaks still glimmer in the slow-growing darkness as if jagged pieces of the moon had dropped from sky to earth. — Anuradha Roy

Sure enough, a few moments later, an enormous blue-green SeaWing emerged from the water, shaking her wings vigorously. She was powerfully built, as big as Morrowseer, with broad shoulders and gleaming teeth and a healing burn scar on her neck, and she had a trident longer than Deathbringer strapped to her back. Holy mother of lava, Deathbringer thought. I'm supposed to kill THAT? Commander Tempest was followed by two more SeaWings: a big green male dragon with dark green eyes and gold bands around his ankles, and a wiry female with small eyes and dark gray-blue scales. Behind them, keeping their scales in the water as they eyed the troops on the beach, were about twenty other SeaWing soldiers. "Blister!" Commander Tempest shouted, stamping one foot in the sand. "We're here! Let's get this over with!" The — Tui T. Sutherland

THE SUN CAME UP a baleful smear in the sky, not quite shapeless, in fact able to assume the appearance of a device immediately recognizable yet unnamable, so widely familiar that the inability to name it passed from simple frustration to a felt dread, whose intricacy deepened almost moment to moment . . . its name a word of power, not to be spoken aloud, not even to be remembered in silence. All around lay ambushes of the bad ice, latent presences, haunting all transaction, each like the infinitesimal circle converging toward zero that mathematicians now and then find use for. A silver-gray, odorless, silent exit from the upper world. . . . The sun might be visible from time to time, with or without clouds, but the sky was more neutral-density gray than blue. Out on the promontory grew some even-textured foliage, in this light a blazing, virtually shadowless green, and breaking down at the base of the headland was the sea-green sea, the ice-green, glass-green sea. Hunter — Thomas Pynchon

Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood.
I'm coming, says Jude.
And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.
What color? I say
Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy.
Very nice.
You remembered, she says.
Jude comes in colors. How could I forget. Trembling blond orgasms that seem to piss her off and rare pink orgasms that never end. Chemical red orgasms that fill her with guilt and perfect orgasms black as fresh earth. Orgasms shadowy and gray that may or may not cause her to weep and orgasms the color of bruised skin, orgasms that fade from purple to yellow and remain visible for days. — Will Christopher Baer

But the herm was gray-faced, lips purple-blue, eyelids fluttering. An IV pump, not dependent upon potentially erratic ship's gravity, infused yellow fluid rapidly into Bel's right arm. The left arm was strapped to a board; plastic tubing filled with blood ran from under a bandage and into a hybrid appliance bound around with quantities of plastic tape. A second tube ran back again, its dark surface moist with condensation. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Slowly rising from the fire, she went down to the shore, and not wanting to frighten him off again, she squatted on a rock above the water, looking down at him where he sat on the wet sand with his long blue-green tail disappearing into the lapping waves. He shyly offered the bag up to her, which had been woven of seaweed, and she took it with a whispered thanks and opened it, staring in delight and surprise at the sheer amount of oysters that were inside.
The siren made a trilling noise and whispered, "I-I hope it is well enough. I do not know what land women eat. — Ash Gray

Reera did not keep them in misery more than a few seconds, for she touched each one with her right hand and instantly the fishes were transformed into three tall and slender young women, with fine, intelligent faces and clothed in handsome, clinging gowns. The one who had been a goldfish had beautiful golden hair and blue eyes and was exceedingly fair of skin; the one who had been a bronzefish had dark brown hair and clear gray eyes and her complexion matched these lovely features. The one who had been a silverfish had snow-white hair of the finest texture and deep brown eyes. The hair contrasted exquisitely with her pink cheeks and ruby-red lips, nor did it make her look a day older than her two companions. — L. Frank Baum

In the center of the sofa were two oblong companion pillows, shouldered so closely together that they looked like the Decalogue tablets. They were white, or had been white, and painfully stitched upon them with blue thread were companion mottoes, companion pictures. In the left pillow lies a girl, her long blue hair asprawl about her face, her eyes innocently shut, asleep. The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY. The pillows sat, stuffed and stiff as disapproving bishops; they could, he thought, serve as twin tombstones for whole gray generations. — Fred Chappell

Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn't resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry that clung to Owen was the granular dust, the gray powder that sprang off his clothes whenever we lifted him up. He was the color of a gravestone; light was both absorbed and reflected by his skin, as with a pearl, so that he appeared translucent at times - especially at his temples, where his blue veins showed through his skin (as though, in addition to his extraordinary size, there were other evidence that he was born too soon). — John Irving

The park is high. And as out of a house
I step out of its glimmering half-light
into openness and evening. Into the wind,
the same wind that the clouds feel,
the bright rivers and the turning mills
that stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge.
Now I too am a thing held in its hand,
the smallest thing under the sky. --Look:

Is that one sky?:
Blissfully lucid blue,
into which ever purer clouds throng,
and under it all white in endless changes,
and over it that huge, thin-spun gray,
pulsing warmly as on red underpaint,
and over everything this silent radiance
of a setting sun.

Miraculous structure,
moved within itself and upheld by itself,
shaping figures, giant wings, faults
and high mountain ridges before the first star
and suddenly, there: a gate into such
distances as perhaps only birds know... — Rainer Maria Rilke

I can go all over the world with just three outfits: a blue blazer and gray flannel pants, a gray flannel suit, and black tie. — Pierre Cardin

They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. — Suzanne Collins

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown are widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling. — William H Gass

Her cream-colored dress, alternately blue or gray as they walked, and — F Scott Fitzgerald

choosing a gown of a dark blue-gray so soft that in the shadow it looked almost indigo. The line of the neck and the sweep of the skirt were both very flattering, and cut in the fashion of the moment. Deliberately she wore no jewelry, except very small diamond drop earrings. Her shining silver hair was ornament enough. — Anne Perry

It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The book phase would bloom and grow into a whole series of seasonal affiliations including our communist phase, our beatnik phase, our vegetarian phase, and the three-year period known as Please Don't Talk to Me. Now that we are finishing up the third decade of the book phase, we ask ourselves if we have changed. Sure, we still dress in the bruise palette of gray, black, and blue, and we still haven't gotten around to piercing our ears. But we wear lipstick now, we own high-heeled shoes. Concessions have been made. — Sarah Vowell

We see the surface, blue or silver or gray, and waves hitting the shore. But we know there's so much we can't see, so what we love about it becomes in part what we imagine it is hiding. — Shannon Hale

Ultimately, Roger learned only of the encounter with the urban bees. The boy remained thoroughly fascinated by what he heard nonetheless, his blue-eyed stare never once straying from Holmes; his visage passive and accepting, his eyes wide, Roger's pupils stated fixed on those venerable, reflective eyes, as though the boy were seeing distant lights shimmering along an opaque horizon, a glimpse of something flickering and alive existing beyond his reach. And, in turn, the gray eyes that focused sharply on him - piercing and kind at the same instant - endeavoured to bridge the lifetime that separated the two of them, attempting to do so as brandy was sipped, and the vial's glass grew warmer against soft palms, and that seasoned, well-lived voice somehow made Roger feel much older and more worldly than his years. — Mitch Cullin

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat's. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec's, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants.
And then there was Camille. — Cassandra Clare

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray
and ashy,
One wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play - the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid. — Walt Whitman

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put 'brown'. I put 'brown', but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look atr other people's eyes. — Elizabeth Moon

They were all very much of a type, tall and narrow-faced, eyes pale blue and pale green and pale gray, their features sharp but oddly empty - young men who has never been lonely or afraid or devastated by grief. — Katherine Addison

Listen up, Nic," she said firmly, looking straight into his gray-blue eyes. "If you die on me out here, so help me I'll hold seances and pester you. I won't give you a moment's peace in the hereafter," she threatened in a fierce whisper. Gabrielle O'Hara, River of Dreams — Sharon K. Garner

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. — Lydia Millet

There was no portion of land in the world with so contradictory a nature as the Highlands. Now it was a land of sunlit moors stained red with heather, knowing only the peace of the quiet sky and the heart-shaking beauty of the blue hills; now it was a harsh and awesome place where silent mists obscured the peaks and a bitter relentless rain came down from bitter skies, where an angry sea washed against the shore, and sullen clouds reflected in sullen gray lochs.
Scotland in the sun and Scotland in the rain ... — Jan Cox Speas

She was an intelligent and honest woman who knew what she was... and she was no beauty. Her attractions were moderate at best, and that was only if one completely discounted the current feminine ideal. She was short, and while on some days she could be described as voluptuous, on others she was most definitely plump. Her hair was a reddish-brown, wildly chaotic mass of curls- hateful curls that successfully defied any substance or implement used to straighten them. Oh, she had nice skin with no pockmarks or blemishes, and her eyes had once been described as "fine" by some well-meaning friend of the family. But they were plain gray eyes, with no shade of green or blue to enliven them. — Lisa Kleypas

The sky outside the window was changing rapidly from deep, velvety blue to cold, steely gray and then, slowly, to pink shot with gold. — J.K. Rowling

When you're in a fighter jet and there's a dark layer of clouds with just one blue hole with the sun going through it, you shoot for that hole. You go vertical into the light, and suddenly, instead of gray and dark, it's light and blue. You are totally connected with the elements. You are in another world. — Yves Rossy

Gotanda swung by at either-forty. He was wearing a perfectly ordinary gray V-neck sweater over a perfectly ordinary blue button-down shirt with- you got it - perfectly ordinary cotton slacks. And still he looked striking. Extraordinarily so. — Haruki Murakami

Gray clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery. — E. M. Forster

You are my song, my dark blue dream
Of doves, of winter's drowsy drone,
And sleighs that slow and golden go
Through gray blue shadows on the snow. — Velimir Khlebnikov

I was thankful that nobody was there to meet me at the airport.
We reached Paris just as the light was fading. It had been a soft, gray March day, with the smell of spring in the air. The wet tarmac glistened underfoot; over the airfield the sky looked very high, rinsed by the afternoon's rain to a pale clear blue. Little trails of soft cloud drifted in the wet wind, and a late sunbeam touched them with a fleeting underglow. Away beyond the airport buildings the telegraph wires swooped gleaming above the road where passing vehicles showed lights already. — Mary Stewart

Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent. — Cassandra Clare

In kindly showers and sunshine bud The branches of the dull gray wood; Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks The blue eye of the violet looks. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Gray mattresses with red and blue stripes in something that looks like a hallway or an overly long waiting room. In any case, his memory is frozen in immediate past like a faceless man in a dentist's chair. There are houses and streets that run down to the sea, dirty windows and shadows on staircase landings. We hear someone say "a long time ago it was noon," the light bounces off the center of immediate past, something that's neither a screen nor attempts to offer images. Memory slowly dictates soundless sentences. We imagine that all of this has been done to avoid confusion, a layer of white paint covers the film on the floor. Fleeing together long ago became living together and thus the integrity of the gesture was lost; the shine of immediate past. — Roberto Bolano

Virgil had read once that Grandma Moses was a primitive painter because she thought snow was white. The writer said if you really looked at it, snow was hardly ever white. It mostly was a gentler version of the color of the sky - blue, gray, orange in the evenings and mornings, often with purple shadows. When he looked, sure enough, the guy was right, and Grandma Moses had her head up her ass. — John Sandford

He looked at me with sunken eyes, unburdened by any great curiosity and ringed in gray and dark-blue shadows that logged his hard living like tree rings. — Christopher Scotton

Some girls are pretty, and it's like they were destined for it. They were meant to be pretty, and as for the rest of us, well, we get to exist on the outer edges of life. It's like moths. They're the same as butterflies, aren't they? They're just gray. They can't help being gray, they just are. But butterflies, they're a million different colors, yellow and emerald and cerulean blue. They're pretty. Who'd dare kill a butterfly? I don't know of a single soul who'd lift a finger against a butterfly. But most anybody would swat at a moth like it was nothing, and all because it isn't pretty. Doesn't seem fair, not at all. — Jenny Han

The land has a memory.
Every stream and river runs with a confession of sorts, history whispered over rocks, lifted in the beaks of birds at a stream, carried out to the sea. Buffalo thunder across plains whose soil was watered with the blood of battles long since relegated to musty books on forgotten shelves. Fields once strewn with blue and gray now flower with uneasy buds. The slave master snaps the lash, and generations later, the ancestral scars remain.
Under it all, the dead lie, remembering. — Libba Bray

Here." Mark shrugged out of his blue T-shirt. He was wearing another T-shirt under it, this one gray. Julian blinked at him. "Proper vestments." He offered it to his brother. "Why are you wearing a T-shirt under your other T-shirt?" Livvy asked, temporarily diverted. "In case one of them is stolen," Mark said, as if this were entirely normal. Everyone paused to stare at him, even Julian, who had stripped off the rags of his shirt and covered himself with Mark's. — Cassandra Clare

He was, as I'd expected, sitting on the most precarious slope of the roof, knees drawn up, arms around them, his expression unreadable as he gazed out over the stonewalled pastures, the barns and byres and cottages, to the smoke gray and velvet green and misty blue of the forest. Not so far away the waters of the lake glinted silver. The breeze was quite chill, catching at my skirts as I came up the slates and settled myself down next to him. Finbar was utterly still. I did not need to look at him to read his mood, for I was tuned to this brother's mind like the bow to the string. — Juliet Marillier

All you need to know about Antarctica is it's three horizontal stripes. On the bottom, there's the stripe for the water, which is anywhere from black to dark gray. And on top of that, there's a stripe for the land, which is usually black or white. Then there's a stripe for the sky, which is some kind of gray or blue. — Maria Semple

It wasn't a rock. It was a dog's rubber bone, left behind months ago to be buried first under autumn leaves, then winter snow. Just an old rubber bone, but Batty was already braced for what she knew would come - the rushing in her ears, the stab in her stomach, and the seeping away of the colors from her world. The soft blue spring sky, the yellow forsythia hedge, even Ben's bright red hair - all dulled, all gray and wretched. — Jeanne Birdsall

Though it was mid-July, the morning was brisk, the sky a gray cotton of clouds, and Puget Sound a steely, cold blue. Most of Seattle grumbled, worn with winterish weather, impatient for the elusive summer sun. With umbrellas tucked away in the trunks of cars, sunglasses lost and separated from their original purchasers, the Pacific Northwest was a bastion of misty air and pale, complaining residents. — Courtney Kirchoff

This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful. — Sarah Ockler

His cream-colored three-piece suit, gray silk tie, and sky blue shirt. He's wearing — Kristen Callihan