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a winter night

“I stepped into a winter night bright from the illuminations of the sky. It was one of those clear nights when the starry firmament is so wide and spreads so far that it seems to be divided and broken up into a mass of separate skies, sufficient for a whole month of winter nights and providing silver and painted globes to cover all the nightly phenomena, adventures, occurrences, and carnivals. . . .

On that night the sky laid bare its internal construction in many sections, which, like quasi-anatomical exhibits, showed the spirals and whorls of light, the pale green solids of darkness, the plasma of space, the tissue of dreams. . . .

The colored map of the heavens expanded into an immense dome, on which there loomed fantastic lands, oceans and seas, marked with the lines of stellar currents and eddies, with the brilliant streaks of heavenly geography. The air became light to breathe and shimmered like silver gauze. One could smell violets. From under the white woolly lambskin of snow, trembling anemones appeared with a speck of moonlight in each delicate cup. The whole forest seemed to be illuminated by thousands of lights and by the stars falling in profusion from the December sky.”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Street of Crocodiles”, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, 1934; translated by Celina Wieniewska.

The sun went westering

“The sun went westering and took on an orange blush.”

—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, 1935.

purple dusk

“It was purple dusk, that sweet time when the day’s sleeping is over, and the evening of pleasure and conversation has begun.”

—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, 1935.

If all the dew were diamonds

“ ‘If all the dew were diamonds,’ Pablo said, ‘we would be very rich. We would be drunk all our lives.’ ”

—John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat, 1935.

Lapis Blue

“She came in lapis blue, O heavenly sight,
A moon of summer on a winter’s night.”

—The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy, 1992.

Breaker of Hearts

“Bedecked in green she came, fair to behold,

As a pomegranate bud the green leaves enfold.

And when we asked, ‘What do you call this dress?’

She answered in sweet words meant to impress,

‘Since I have tortured many with my arts,

In this dress, I call it Breaker of Hearts.’ ”

—The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy, 1992.

a verdant scene

“If water can turn cheeks into green fields,

My tears might have covered my cheeks with green,

Reflecting the same tincture in their flow,

Turning my face into a verdant scene, . . .”

—The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy, 1992.

Hebron plums

“They entered through a vaulted gateway that looked like a gateway in Paradise and passed through a bower of trellised boughs overhung with vines bearing grapes of various colors, the red like rubies, the black like Abyssinian faces, and the white, which hung between the red and the black, like pearls between red coral and back fish. . . . The trees were laden with all manner of ripe fruits: pomegranates, sweet, sour, and sour-sweet; apples, sweet and wild; and Hebron plums as sweet as wine, whose color no eyes have seen and whose flavor no tongue can describe.”

—The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy, 1992.

Writing books

the Burj Dubai

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