there are more sensations than words for them
“Colors challenge language to encompass them. (It cannot; there are more sensations than words for them. Our eyes are far ahead of our tongues.)”
—Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise, 2002.
the Right Blue Claim
“In sun that burns white-hot I say aloud the names of Nevada mines for a coolness that a word might bring. The Blue Fern Mine. The Blue Goose Claim. The Blue Jay, Blue Matrix, Blue Friday, Blue Silver, Easter Blue MInes. Mines that come in shades—New, Royal, and Sky Blue—and in certainty: the Right Blue Claim.”
—Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise, 2002.
a sympathetic gem
“Turquoise changes color. Sometimes its color vanishes—one early source calls it ‘air green.’ The wearer can influence these changes. Turquoise is a sympathetic gem.”
—Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise, 2002.
green confusion
“It has been shown that the words for colors enter evolving languages in this order, nearly universally: black, white, and red, then yellow and green (in either order), with green covering blue until blue comes into itself. Once blue is acquired, it eclipses green. Once named, blue pushes green into a less definite version. Green confusion is manifest in turquoise, the is-it-blue-or-is-it-green color.”
—Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise, 2002.
In the funhouse mirror-room
“In the funhouse mirror-room you can’t see yourself go on forever, because no matter how you stand, your head gets in the way. Even if you had a glass periscope, the image of your eye would cover up the thing you really wanted to see.”
—John Barth, ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, Lost in the Funhouse, 1968.
an unexpected color
“Words begin as description. They are prismatic, vehicles of hidden, deeper shades of thought. You can hold them up at different angles until the light bursts through in an unexpected color.”
—Susan Brind Morrow, The Names of Things, 1998.
Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs
red. Or pink, or orange, or even yellow
“The author would like to acknowledge that he does not look good in red. Or pink, or orange, or even yellow—he is not a spring.”
—Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 2001.
pink, purple, rainbow, gold
“There is no logic to San Francisco . . . a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It’s the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons. Why not pink, purple, rainbow, gold? What color for a biker bar on 16th, near the highway? Plum. Plum.”
—Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 2001.
mulberrycoloured
“‘Drink, the Irish opium, was his solace. Only the sacred pint could unbind his tongue and naturally an excess of sacred pints had him prostrated in his ‘mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit.’”
—Edna O’Brien, James Joyce, 1999.