the green of paradise
“Were Adam’s eyes the green of paradise? Did they open on the vivid green of the Garden of Eden? God’s green mantle. Was green the first colour of perception?”
—Derek Jarman, “Green Fingers”, from Chroma: A Book of Color; quoted by Bruce R. Smith in The Key of Green, 2009.
Snoogle
didn’t take formal classes in typeface design or have a typeface design
professor,” he says. “My teacher was—and still is—the typefaces
themselves.”
—Hannes Von Döhren, designer of Snoogle Dingbats and Snoogle Regular (above), in A Quintessentially Talented Typographic Quartet by Allan Haley.
A white cream cake with stripes of sunflower orange
“He shook my hand heartily and slapped me on the back and gave me a slice of cake. I had never had cake, and in retrospect it doesn’t make much sense that he would greet me at nine thirty in the morning with cake, but he did, and it was delicious. A white cream cake with stripes of sunflower orange.”
—Dave Eggers, What is the What, 2006.
the dome of the sky
“The night was bright, a half-moon high above us. Deng and I had watched it rise, first red then orange and yellow and then white and finally silver as it settled at the uppermost point of the dome of the sky.”
—Dave Eggers, What is the What, 2006.
God bless the namers of oil paints and high-class women’s underwear
“The sky darkens from ultramarine to indigo. God bless the namers of oil paints and high-class women’s underwear, Snowman thinks. Rose-Petal Pink, Crimson Lake, Sheer Mist, Burnt Umber, Ripe Plum, Indigo, Ultramarine—they’re fantasies in themselves, such words and phrases. It’s comforting to remember that Homo sapiens sapiens was once so ingenious with language. . . .”
—Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 2003.
chocolate, rose, tea, butter, cream, honey
“It’s discouraging how grubby everyone gets without mirrors. Still they’re amazingly attractive, these children—each one naked, each one perfect, each one a different skin color—chocolate, rose, tea, butter, cream, honey—but each with green eyes. Crake’s aesthetic.”
—Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 2003.
Yma Sumac, La Castafiore Inca
Yma Sumac “Chuncho”
Josephine Baker “Le Chemin du Bonheur”
the yellow afternoon
“Slow as sheep they moved, tranquil, impassable, filling the passages, contemplating the fretful hurrying of those in urban shirts and collars with the large, mild inscrutablitiy of cattle or of gods, functioning outside of time, having left time lying upon the slow and imponderable land green with corn and cotton in the yellow afternoon.”
—William Faulkner, Sanctuary, 1931.