Ed’s note
I’ve been obsessively collecting these color quotes for about three years, and it’s almost time to stop. I am editing these into chapters that I am categorizing by hue, etcetera, and the process is nearly complete.
I’ll self-publish it if I have to, such things can be done these days, but it only counts as credit in academia if someone else publishes it. This is “peer review.” So I’m about to begin my search for a publisher, someone who will take these color quotes off my hands and then make us both famous. I personally think this book could be very big.
Does anyone know a publisher, or a book agent? I am seriously looking. I think I want a book agent. Are they anything like secret agents? Do they just show up at your door?
the apple jelly of the heart-rending sea
“The cat was asleep in the stuffy room of the President’s daughter who was dreaming of not being able to find a certain pot of apple jelly which she knew was a ship she had once seen in Bervok and a sailor was leaning and spitting overboard, watching his spit fall, fall, fall, into the apple jelly of the heart-rending sea for her dream was shot with golden-yellow, as she had not put out the lamp, wishing to keep awake until her old father’s guests had gone.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister, 1947.
‘runs blue, writes black’
“It is all inky black with a pale blue inky sky—‘runs blue, writes black’ as that ink bottle said, but it did not, nor does the sky, but the trees do with their trillions of twigs.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister, 1947.
a mauve mist
“Toward the end of the afternoon, a mauve mist veils the avenues so that you do not know where they end, and the unexpected discovery of a wild hyacinth, with its three slender bells of artless blue swaying in the wind, has all the charm of a stolen joy.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
The thin rain
“The thin rain, falling past the square of my lighted window, looks like damp, finely-sifted flour, white against the black background of the road.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
a tawny brown
“His hair and his eyebrows and lashes are as black as the devil, and it needed a very bright ray of sunshine one day to show me that, beneath all that black, my admirer’s eyes are a tawny brown, and very deep set.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
a field of violets
“Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
the patina of the centuries
“He wore a large black hat that looked like a raven with widespread wings, and a velvet vest across which the patina of the centuries had skated.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
the largest diamond in the world
“When it was opened by the giant, the chest gave off a glacial exhalation. Inside there was only an enormous, transparent block with infinite internal needles in which the light of the sunset was broken up into colored stars. Disconcerted, knowing that the children were waiting for an immediate explanation, Jos’ Arcadio Buendia ventured a murmur:
‘It’s the largest diamond in the world.’
‘No,’ the gypsy countered. ‘It’s ice.’”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.
a red cloth
“On Saturday night, Jos’ Arcadio wrapped a red cloth around his head and left with the gypsies.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1970.