White Sky Quotes & Sayings

I look out my window at the blue sky,
The white clouds,
and the green leaves of the Rustling trees,
And I realize i'm already in Heaven — Michelle Geaney

And perhaps one day, in after years, someone would wander there and listen to the silence, as she had done, and catch the whisper of the dreams that she had dreamt there, in midsummer, under the hot sun and the white sky. — Daphne Du Maurier

Then instead of hurrying he was standing still, he was very tired and sweating under the heavy coat, and looking up he saw a white shining fan, spreading over the sky, like light from a door slowly opening, and he knew the moon was coming out of the clouds. Then he looked over the sea and there were islands it seemed, and then a great migration of birds thickened the air and he was in a rushing of wings, the wings beat so dark and fast round him he felt dizzy like falling and the moon disappeared. And then it was clear again, brilliant moonlight, and there, ahead, bright as day, were all the small islands, Cape Promise, and the bay of Mairangi, wide, still, unbelievably peaceful under the full moon. And then he did know where he was going. — Anna Kavan

I looked up from that churning amphitheater to the view beyond it.
The great, gray eye of the sky looked back at me, its mist-shrouded sun focusing
all the white and silent distances that poured from every point of the compass, hill after pale hill, to stall at my feet. — Sylvia Plath

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

It was colder that winter than I knew cold could be, even though the girl from Minnesota down the hall declared it "nothing." Out in Oregon, snow had been a gift, a two-day dusting earned by enduring months of gray, dripping sky. But the wind whipping up the Hudson from the city was so vehement that even my bone marrow froze. Every morning, I hunkered under my duvet, unsure of how I'd make it to my 9:00 a.m. Latin class. The clouds spilled endless white and Ev slept in. — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

I could have screamed, but I didn't. I could have fought, but I didn't. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me. — Maggie Stiefvater

She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds. — Vladimir Nabokov

The light irradiates white peaks of Annapurna marching down the sky, in the great rampart that spreads east and west for eighteen hundred miles, the Himalaya- the alaya (abode, or home) of hima (snow).Hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea: seen under snow peaks, these tropical blossoms become the flowers of heroic landscapes. Macaques scamper in green meadow, and a turquoise roller spins in a golden light. Drongos, rollers, barbets, and white Eqyptian vulture are the common birds, and all have close relatives in East Africa. — Peter Matthiessen

Rahel thought of the someone who had taken the trouble to go up there with cans of paint, white for the clouds, blue for the sky, silver for the jets, and brushes, and thinner. — Arundhati Roy

I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever-glorious! Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour, making me one with thy light, and thus I count months and years separated from thee.
If this be thy wish and if this be thy play, then take this fleeting emptiness of mine, paint it with colours, gild it with gold, float it on the wanton wind and spread it in varied wonders.
And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at night, I shall melt and vanish away in the dark, or it may be in a smile of the white morning, in a coolness of purity transparent. — Rabindranath Tagore

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky. — Vincent Van Gogh

The woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. — Arthur Machen

The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love. — Mervyn Peake

Summer came whirling out of the night and stuck fast. One morning late in November everybody got up at Cloudstreet and saw the white heat washing in through the windows. The wild oats and buffalo grass were brown and crisp. The sky was the color of kerosene. The air was thin and volatile. Smoke rolled along the tracks as men began to burn off on the embankment. Birds cut singing down to a few necessary phrases, and beneath them in the streets, the tar began to bubble. The city was full of Yank soldiers; the trams were crammed to standing with them. The river sucked up the sky and went flat and glittery right down the middle of the place and people went to it in boats and britches and barebacked. Where the river met the sea, the beaches ran north and south, white and broad as highways in a dream, and men and babies stood in the surf while gulls hung in the haze above, casting shadows on the immodest backs of the oilslicked women. — Tim Winton

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. — Carl Sagan

Through the white snow-gate of our ampitheatre, as through a frame we looked eastward upon the summit group; not a tree, not a vestige of vegetation in sight,-sky, snow and granite the only elements in this wild picture. — Clarence King

How was the light today?"
"Big. Hot. Yellow-white. The sky's blue was like a drumbeat. I watched the black tree shadows revolve. When the sun went down it was like someone's hand was pulling it, very gently. It was soft-edged and orange. The land went purple, then dark blue and grey, then black. Then you opened your eyes. — Glen Duncan

Today the snow is white and swirling, the sky is close, and the world is so big and beautiful and infinite that we don't need to pretend. All we know is already perfect. — Amy Zhang

And to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. — Thomas Hardy

It's like my having to walk down thousands and thousands of white marble stairs ... and nothing but a very very blue sky, very blue ... and I'd have to walk down them forever. I never thought about going up ... Don't you think that must mean something? — Edie Sedgwick

I had a dream that I saw God walking across Harrison on the far side of the lake, a God so gigantic that above the waist He was lost in a clear blue sky. In the dream I could hear the rending crack and splinter of breaking trees as God stamped the woods into the shape of His footsteps. He was circling the lake, coming toward the Bridgton side, toward us, and all the houses and cottages and summer places were bursting into purple-white flame like lightning, and soon the smoke covered everything. The smoke covered everything like a mist. — Stephen King

I've read that a naked eye can see six thousand stars in the hundred billion galaxies, but I couldn't believe it, what with the sky white with starlight. I saw a million stars with one eye and two million with both. — William Least Heat-Moon

The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No colour at all, save for the neighbouring trees and grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colourless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick. — Erin Morgenstern

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

What a night it was! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness.
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. ("Man Size In Marble") — E. Nesbit

I stood with my arms stretched wide and trembling, and I felt as if the black sky was my body and I felt as if the white moon, far above me, unwrinkled and shining, was my mind. — Karen Russell

Today - be the white clouds full of dreams and hopes in someone's sky. — Debasish Mridha

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift. — Shauna Niequist

Lightning. Once it has forked, hot-white, from sky to earth, there is no going back — Ally Condie

And a face above mine, white and beautiful, eyes as large as the moon. You saved me. A hand on my cheek, cool and dry. Why did you save me? Words welling up on a tide: No, the opposite. Eyes the colour of a dawn sky, a crown of blond hair, so bright and white and blinding I could swear it was a halo. — Lauren Oliver

I possess a gorgeous world.
I created it and painted it like a five
years old, where the sky is woven
with golden threads and the sun is
pearl white.
But alas! You can't observe it as they
are positioned inside my mind my
imaginations ...
-Rohan Nath — Rohan Nath

Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but of judgement; as though even here in the filtering dusk, here beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and darting moths, here in the hereness of the night not yet lighted by the moon that looms blood-red behind the chapel like a fallen sun, its radiance shedding not upon the here-dusk of twittering bats, nor on the there-night of cricket and whippoorwill, but focused short-rayed upon our place of convergence; and we drifting forward with rigid motions, limbs stiff and voices now silent, as though on exhibit even in the dark, and the moon a white man's bloodshot eye. — Ralph Ellison

There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses, the ones that gave off the scent of cloves in the rain and the ones that left a trace of lemon on your fingers, the ones that were the color of blood, and those that were as white as clouds. Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones. — Alice Hoffman

Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with — Francesca Lia Block

I would like to forget the image of the ship's crane at Southampton docks when it lifted into the sky the three wooden trunks which held all that my family owned. There is only one memory I want to preserve. It is Maria, who is also Zama, sipping condensed milk on the steps of the doep at night. The African nights were warm. The stars were bright. I loved Maria but I'm not sure she loved me back. Politics and poverty had separated her from her own children and she was exhausted by the white children in her care, by everyone and everything in her care. At the end of the day, away from the people who stole her life's energy and made her tired, she had found a place to rest, momentarily, from myths about her character and her purpose in life." (from "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy) — Deborah Levy

And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre's eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre's newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life. — Leo Tolstoy

There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They create so much gravitational pull there's no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion - that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it's too late. — Jodi Picoult

The sky was like ebony and the only illumination was the harsh white light of the central streetlamp, which cast shadows so hard it seemed you might cut yourself on them. — Jasper Fforde

When?' said the moon to the stars in the sky
Soon' said the wind that followed them all
Who?' said the cloud that started to cry
Me' said the rider as dry as a bone
How?' said the sun that melted the ground
and 'Why?' said the river that refused to run
and 'Where?' said the thunder without a sound
Here' said the rider and took up his gun
No' said the stars to the moon in the sky
No' said the trees that started to moan
No' said the dust that blunted its eyes
Yes' said the rider as white as a bone
No' said the moon that rose from his sleep
No' said the cry of the dying sun
No' said the planet as it started to weep
Yes' said the rider and laid down his gun — Nick Cave

People want black-and-white answers, but Scripture is rainbow arch across a stormy sky. — Sarah Bessey

Kunlun Mountain Over the earth the greenblue monster Kunlun who has seen all spring color and passion of men. Three million dragons of white jade soar and freeze the whole sky with snow. When a summer sun heats the globe rivers flood and men turn into fish and turtles. Who can judge a thousand years of accomplishments or failures? — Mao Zedong

The walls are white, the track is grey, the grass is green, and the sky is blue ... your job is to keep them all where they belong. — Johnny Rutherford

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead. — Wallace Stegner

The search for myself is ended. I am buried in the world, I knew I would find my place there one day, the old world cloisters me, victorious. I am happy, I knew I would be happy one day. But I am not wise. For the wise thing now would be to let go, at this instant of happiness. And what do I do? I go back again to the light, to the fields I so longed to love, to the sky all astir with little white clouds as white and light as snowflakes, to the life I could never manage, through my own fault perhaps, through pride, or pettiness, but I don't think so. — Samuel Beckett

Mine. Kira had stood silently, embarrassed but proud, as the guardian examined the threading she had done. He made no comment, simply nodded and returned the small piece to her. But his eyes had been bright with interest, she could see. Each year following, he had asked to see her work. Kira always stood at her mother's side, never touching the fragile ancient cloth, marveling each time at the rich hues that told the history of the world. Golds and reds and browns. And here and there, faded pale, almost reduced to white, there had once been blue. Her mother showed her the faded places that remained of it. Her mother did not know how to make blue. Sometimes they talked of it, Kira and Katrina, looking at the huge upturned bowl of sky above their — Lois Lowry

Alex's T-shirt is red, and for a second I think it's a trick of the light, but then I realise he's drenched, soaked in blood: blood seeping across his chest, like the stain seeping up the sky, bringing another day to the world. Behind him is that insect army of men, all running toward him at once, guns drawn. The guards are coming too, reaching for him from both sides ... The helicopter has him fixed in it's spotlight. He is standing white and still and frozen in its beam, and I don't think I have ever, in my life, seen anything more beautiful than him. — Lauren Oliver

On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice. — Albert Camus

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child
our own two eyes. All is a miracle. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A weeping grey sky
descends on my umbrella-
Bright daffodils dance. — A.K. White

I had seen the world as either white or black.
It is only when I read the pages of her diary that I understood why the sky looked so grey. — Sanhita Baruah

Have you seen the careful manner in which deer drink from a lake at sunrise? That is the way she moves. Have you ever heard the sound a shooting star makes as it crosses a cloudy sky? That is the way she breathes. — S.M. White

Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need. — Ben Marcus

Pale sky, white land; like somewhere past the end of the world — Rinsai Rossetti

And suddenly the cockpit of the Lancaster breasts the cloud tops, and there is the sky, vast and clear and brilliantly blue. The wisps of cloud that rush past you are so white that you can't believe you've ever seen true whiteness before. — Jack Currie

Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning, the reason is simple, I couldn't understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much you would never tell. I could sell these things. People want to buy them, but I'd set all this on fire first. She'd like that, that's what she would do. She'd make it just to burn it. I couldn't afford this one, but the beginning deserves something special. But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky, has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her. I don't know how to express the being with someone so dangerous is the last time I felt safe ... (White Oleander) — Janet Fitch

Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike-brothers of one father and one another, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. — Chief Joseph

He was looking up at the sky, where a pale crescent of moon darted in between thick sweeps of cloud and fog. Flakes of white snow had fallen and mixed with his black hair. His cheeks and lips were flushed with the cold. He looked more handsome than she had ever remembered him. — Cassandra Clare

For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) — Terry Pratchett

Cursing themselves in ragged dreams
fire has singed the edges of,
they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with.
Shimmering fans work against the heat
& smell of gunpowder, making money
float from hand to hand. The next moment
a rocket pushes a white fist
through night sky, & they scatter like birds
& fall into the shape their lives
have become. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason." And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion. — Kahlil Gibran

The air was cool and fresh and smelled of the kelp and salt that streamed in off the bay at the full of the tide. The sun was high in the tender vault of the sky, and the thunderheads that would sweep in late in the day were still only white marble puffs at the margins of the sky, solid and silver-lined. There was a blue clarity about the horizon and the distant hills that spoke of a weather change but not for another day or two. Along the meadows' edges, as we drove past, I saw pink clover and purple lupine, hawkweed and wild daylilies. Brilliant pink wild azaleas, called lambkill here, flickered like wildfire in the birch groves. Daisies, buttercups, wild columbine, and the purple flags of wild iris starred the roadside. Behind them all was the eternal dark of the pines and firs and spruce thickets and, between those, the glittering indigo of the bay. — Anne Rivers Siddons

Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky 'Til I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You're all that I can call my own. — Maya Angelou

The Great Point lighthouse rose at the far end of the barrier beach, a tall white steeple to the sky, with a working light flashing at the top. Here was the end of the island, the great point where the Atlantic Ocean met Nantucket Sound in a froth of waves. All along the point, enormous fat seals lolled on the sand, occasionally lumbering in and out of the water, grunting and lounging like a tribe of overfed Roman emperors. — Nancy Thayer

I descended to the ocean floor and encountered bloated, symmetrical creatures with pumping white hearts and translucent skin. Collapsed blue civilizations lived down there, fissured and antiseptic, craggy with barnacles and blistering rust. I reached into the heart of the earth, the sky, the moon. I colonized language, mathematics, schemes of chemical order and atomic weight. I studied the manufacture of automobiles, microcircuitry, Kleenex and planets. I memorized the gross national products of nations and hemispheres, the populations of cities and states and principalities, the achievements of presidents, tyrants and kings. I was trying to learn what I suspect Mom had learned already: that there were journeys we all make alone that take us far away from one another. — Scott Bradfield

He was fine, and foreign, and he did not belong here. I held him close, not crushing, not waking him, letting him sleep, and I suffered. I had never felt such feelings before. I would do anything for him; I would do anything. Anything that was asked of me, that would increase his happiness or health, I would do, and willingly. So I told myself, rocking him, the winter sky white at the window. — Margo Lanagan

All the color had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. The Stark colors. Theon did not know whether he ought to find that ominous or reassuring. Even the sky was grey. The eyes of the bride were brown. Big and brown and full of fear. — George R R Martin

Gather Me


Scatter me into the digression of this noise
For, I hear not when my eyes are at peace.
I smother the audacity in my voice
Hiding behind a half-charred fleece;
Let me dwell with the fleeting score,
For, I breathe not when my heart is agog!
I strangle the remains of what you tore
Building the ruins of a deserted synagogue;
Then, gather me
From the compositions of a faded song,
From the reverberations of an unaided gong;
From the mirth of our spring sky,
From the waters where thirsts lie;
From the sleekness of white-rose petals,
From the shrieks of remorse bells;
From the digression of laughter beats,
From the silence of bloodied streets;
From the eyes of their precarious silence,
From there; thence, from there; thence,
Then, gather me. — Ashfaq Saraf

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones. — Haruki Murakami

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip. — Laurie Halse Anderson

A story that began with, and exists because of, my love of the remoter parts of Scotland, where the bones of the Earth show through, and the sky is a pale white, and it's all astoundingly beautiful, and it feels about as remote as any place can possibly be. — Neil Gaiman

He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place. — Alexander McCall Smith

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow. — Denise Levertov

A Language"

Today the sky is blue dust
and the mountains blue shadows
against the dust so only
the snow line across the peaks
actually exists, a scribbled
white cursive, words piling up
here and thinning out there,
like the long sentence you'd write
against the sky if you thought
you had that much to say. — Robert W. King

But when you walk through yonder gate," Churchill said, pointing toward the Middle Tower at the end of the causeway, which was visible only as a crenellated cutout in the orange sky, "you'll find yourself in a London you no longer know. The changes wrought by the Fire were nothing. In that London, loyalty and allegiance are subtle and fluxional. 'Tis a chessboard with not only black and white pieces, but others as well, in diverse shades. You're a Bishop, and I'm a Knight, I can tell that much by our shapes, and the changes we have wrought on the board; but by fire-light 'Tis difficult to make out your true shade. — Neal Stephenson

Imagine that the whole world belongs to you. The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's big island.
You own everything, my dear sovereign - the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the internet and the wild horses and the roads. Please take good care of it all, OK? Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility. And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery. Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you. — Rob Brezsny

Who will you be when faced with the end?
The end of a kingdom,
The end of good men,
Will you run?
Will you hide?
Or will you hunt down evil with a venomous pride?

Rise to the ashes,
Rise to the winter sky,
Rise to the calling,
Make heard the battle cry.
Let it scream from the mountains
From the forest to the chapel,
Because death is a hungry mouth
And you are the apple.

So who will you be when faced with the end?
When the vultures are circling
And the shadows descend
Will you cower?
Or will you fight?
Is your heart made of glass?
Or a pure Snow White? — Lily Blake

From the mountain peaks for streams descend and flow near the town; in the cascades the white water is calling, but the mistis do not hear it. On the hillsides, on the plains, on the mountaintops the yellow flowers dance in the wind, but the mistis hardly see them. At dawn, against the cold sky, beyond the edge of the mountains, the sun appears; then the larks and doves sing, fluttering their little wings; the sheep and the colts run to and fro in the grass, while the mistis sleep or watch, calculating the weight of their steers. In the evening Tayta Inti gilds the sk, gilds the earth, but they sneeze, spur their horses on the road, or drink coffee, drink hot pisco.
But in the hearts of the Puquios, the valley is weeping and laughing, in their eyes the sky and the sun are alive; within them the valley sings with the voice of the morning, of the noontide, of the afternoon, of the evening. — Jose Maria Arguedas

Finally I looked to the cold, white sky and prayed to a God I wasn't sure I believed in to heal the girl I loved. — C. Desir

The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded
that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges. — David Guterson

She was on the verge of losing when a white smoke shot up from the pile. With no wind to disperse it, the smoke became an unbroken thread rising straight towards the sky. The pile must have caught fire somewhere, but still there was no sign of flames. — Haruki Murakami

They are flying now above a dreamscape of rollercoasting white cloud crests. It feels sometimes like a premonition of death. Being so high up in the sky where no other living creature can survive. Where there is nothing solid. Just shifting transparency, luminous endless space. — Glenn Haybittle

A little group of thatched cottages in the middle of the village had an orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue sky seen through the white clusters of apple blossom in spring. I remember being moonstruck looking at it one morning early on my way to school. It meant something for me; what, I couldn't say. It gave me such an unease at heart, some reaching out towards perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold on life. — A. L. Rowse

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! — J.R.R. Tolkien

I? I am the wind,' said Thowra. 'I come, I pass, and I am gone.' The strange feathers moved up and down, the strange voice said tartly: 'And are your sons the same?' 'My son is the lightning that strikes through the black night. My grandson is light that pierces the dark sky at dawning.' 'Ah,' said the first emu, 'and we know your daughter is the snow that falls softly from above and clothes the world in white. You want but the rainbow - that is and was and never will be, and is yet the promise of life - and the glittering ice which is there and is gone: then you and your family will possess all magic. — Elyne Mitchell

If I were to choose the sights, the sounds, the fragrances I most would want to see and hear and smell
among all the delights of the open world
on a final day on earth, I think I would choose these: the clear, ethereal song of a white-throated sparrow singing at dawn; the smell of pine trees in the heat of the noon; the lonely calling of Canada geese; the sight of a dragon-fly glinting in the sunshine; the voice of a hermit thrush far in a darkening woods at evening; and
most spiritual and moving of sights
the white cathedral of a cumulus cloud floating serenely in the blue of the sky. — Edwin Way Teale

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky - I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Sleepless ... — William Wordsworth

In the toils of orgasm - she said, she said - she'd be whelmed in a warm green sea through which, dulled by the murk of it, pass a series of small suns like the footlights of a revolving stage, an electric carousel wheeling in a green ether. Envy's color is the color of her pleasuring, and what is the color of grief? Is it black as they say? And anger always red? The color of that sad shade of ennui called blue is blue but blue unlike the sky or sea, a bitter blue, rue-tinged, discolored at the edges. The color of a blind man's noon is white, and is his nighttime too? And does he feel it with his skin like a fish? Does he have blues, are they bridal and serene, or yellows, sunlike or urinous, does he remember? Neural colors like the fleeting tones of dreams. The color of this life is water. — Cormac McCarthy

But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no matter its state, its form, its qualities, or its color, each molecule of water still consists of no more than a single oxygen atom bonded to two sister atoms of hydrogen. It takes all three of them to make a blinding blizzard - or a thunderstorm, for that matter ... or a puffy white cloud in a summer sky. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! — Alan Bradley

I follow his stare at the speckles of stars. Suddenly I wonder, "Aren't you guys supposed to, like, sparkle or something?" And immediately wish I hadn't. Frederik stands up so quickly that he doesn't disturb the sand. He grabs the front of my shirt and growls--his eyes are black as the night sky along the horizon, and red veins fray against the white of his eyes. His sharp canines are exposed. "I.Don't.Sparkle." He lets go of me and becomes regular bored Frederik again, no fangs, no bloodshot eyes. Just a dude sitting on the beach at night. — Zoraida Cordova

It was strange to be outside on a summer's evening. Rachel breathed in the scent of the delicate white flowers on the star jasmine and looked up at the sky. She saw what at first she thought was a bird, then realised it was a bat, and beyond that, in the sky, she saw thousands of stars. — Mary Grand

Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon. — Margaret Mahy

You're not just looking up into a curtain of black. You're looking into the eye of the universe. Stare for a while and you start to realize -- on a deep, gut level -- that the moon is a giant rock circling us in space. The sun is a violent, fusion-fueled ball of plasma and gas millions of miles away that destroyed the atmospheres of all of the inner planets (including Mars, which is farther away from it than we are) and would do the same to ours if we weren't lucky enough to have a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind. The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which are far more impressive than our puny sun. And that smear of milky white through the sky? That's the center of our own galaxy -- a gigantic pinwheel circling a supermassive black hole like floating detritus around the vortex of a flushing toilet. — Johnny B. Truant

That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and glittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers we are solemnly impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure that we are not conscious of them. — Gaston Bachelard

Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens and the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The stag's enormous head turned slightly - toward the wagon, toward the small window.
The Lord of the North.
So the people of Terrasen will always know how to find their way home, she'd once told Ansel as they lay under a blanket of stars and traced the constellation of the stag.
So they can look up at the sky, no matter where they are, and know Terrasen is forever with them. — Sarah J. Maas

And every day there is music. One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.
And what kind of gang is this that can make such music? Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this country. Just twelve mortal men who are together. — Carson McCullers

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life? — Mary Oliver

I will continue wearing the white hat and black mask until I ride up into the big ranch in the sky. — Clayton Moore