an inviting touch
“The improbable red of the taller ones hair impressed him as stylish, while the smaller ones bright orange skirt lit up the dark corner like a forest blazean inviting touch, he thought.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
[A]ll his pictures looked alike
“[A]ll his pictures looked alike to Lize. Great lozenges of red and white (I love blood, he always said), black and gray squares (I love chess, hed say), long green spikes (I love asparagus). All Lize had learned about art from her life with painters was that the big pictures were for museums and the little ones for art.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
shrimp-pink hair
“Johathan heard a feminine voice . . . and turned to see a big girl with shrimp-pink hair laughing at his absorption.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
Wedgewood blue
“The hotel stationery was Wedgewood blue like the wallpaper, delicately embossed with a gold crest and a motto, In virtu vinci, a nice thought, whatever it meant, for a hotel. Nice paper, too. Paper like that could make a writer of you, if anything could.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
a ghostly haze
“A fog had rolled in fom the bay and blurred out the meadow so the house seemed suspended in a ghostly haze, its two upstairs windows bleak eye sockets, its front porch railing the teeth in a deaths head.”
—Dawn Powell, The Wicked Pavilion, 1954.
the Hookley Roman
“Wharton himself had been no beaury, licked at the start by a nose that did seem an outrage, a mongrel affair beginning as the Hookley Roman then spreading into Egyptian, and possessing a perverse talent for collecting lumps, iridescent scales, ridges and spots so that it seemed to reflect half a dozen colors simultaneously, ranging through bruise-purple, cabbage green, mulberry red, baby-bottom pink and chalk white.”
—Dawn Powell, The Wicked Pavilion, 1954.
floating dollar signs
“The very air of the room seemed charmingly alive with little floating dollar signs and fat little ciphers, commas, more ciphers, all winging around happily, waiting for a mere scratch of the pen to call them into action.”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.
Bubbling Clouds Stiffly Whipped
“Through the windows, curtained in heavy pink toile de Jouy, the afternoon sky seemed marvellously blue, with bubbling clouds stiffly whipped, looking as if the great chef Oscar himself had shot them out with a pastry-gun.”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.
sumptuously soft
“[T]he radio was playing a Paul Whiteman recording of Afraid to Dream as sumptuously soft as the white bear rug in front of the great fireplace.”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.
strong and yellow as field corn
“His teeth, strong and yellow as field corn, were bared in a momentary smile. . . .”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.