Never let it be said that Americans were afraid of color
Nnenna Freelon
engraved with needles at the corner of the eye
“My story . . . is a strange and amazing one, which, if it could be engraved with needles at the corner of the eye, would be a lesson to those who would consider.”
(I.e., if a master calligrapher could by a miracle of his art write the entire story at the corner of an eye, it would then be read as a double miracle, one for the extraordinary events, one for the extraordinary art.)
—The Arabian Nights, translated (and annotated) by Husain Haddawy, 1992.
looked like T’s
“Two backwoods brothers by the name of Granger, tall bony fellers with single thick black brows over long noses, looked like T’s. I knew this breed, knew that easing by in life was their ambition: Durrance must have signed them on to keep ’em from rustling his stray beefs. The frowns on those T faces told me they were worried . . .”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
The Mone Is Belewe
“Yf they say the mone is belewe
We must believe that it is true”
(If they say the moon is blue
We must believe that it is true)
—Anonymous, ‘Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe’ (Read me and be not angry), a protest against the Church of England’s authority, 1528.
the eye of the beholder
“Sometimes they discussed Charlie Tommie a mixed-breed Mikasuki and full fledged scavenger who had all or most of the sorry traits of the red, black, and white races, but the feller they mostly talked about was Henry Short, whose color was in the eye of the beholder, according to how you turned him to the light.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
greenish eyes
“When I stopped, he stopped, too, regarding me out of greenish eyes as bright and cold as broken glass and nodding his head to indicate he knew my game.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008
That silver glint in them blue eyes
“ ‘Do you remember what he looked like, Paul?’ Letitia inquired dutifully.
‘A-course I do! That silver glint in them blue eyes made a man go quaky in the belly.’ ”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
his eyes never fit his smile
“Leslie wasn’t good at jokes and his eyes never fit his smile. If a June bug flew into his eye, you would hear the smack of it; those eyes were as hard as shiny stones.”
—Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country, 2008.
We feel pleasure and we call it beauty
“Animals are wired to feel better and better when they are helped and so they feel pleasure when they find food or shelter or a mate. When we see the proportions in the golden ratio, we are helped. We feel pleasure and we call it beauty.”
—Adrian Bejan, in “Why golden ratio pleases the eye: US academic says he knows art secret”, December 28, 2009.