a pink shirt
“Eighteen bucks, said Lou. I swore Id never wear a pink shirt but it was the goods that got me. Feel that material.”
—Dawn Powell, Angels on Toast, 1938.
her little brown eyes
“As she talked her little brown eyes shopped over his person busily, price-tagging his corduroy slacks and checked shirt, recognizing his old sport jacket and mentally throwing it out.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
the wonderful diamond-studded air
“Three hundred cool dollars just like that. He stood still, breathing deep of the wonderful diamond-studded air, looking down beautiful Lexington Avenue, a street paved with gold, saw the little jewelry-store window right beside him and decided instantly he would go in and buy the silver writswatch on the blue velvet.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
greenish-gray hair and lashes
“The large bulbous nose, the greenish-gray hair and lashes, the gray-white eyes, all had the deathly color of leather buried for centuries in Davy Joness locker, and the neatly folled cloth bundle under his arm seemed a marinerss kit.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
the unearthly sea-bottom moon-green
“He had to get back to his own Village, to the half-finished canvas he had deserted. He had to find again that green, the wonderful green, the true paint-green, the unearthly sea-bottom moon-green, not the lousy nature-green of trees and grass.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
an inviting touch
“The improbable red of the taller ones hair impressed him as stylish, while the smaller ones bright orange skirt lit up the dark corner like a forest blazean inviting touch, he thought.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
[A]ll his pictures looked alike
“[A]ll his pictures looked alike to Lize. Great lozenges of red and white (I love blood, he always said), black and gray squares (I love chess, hed say), long green spikes (I love asparagus). All Lize had learned about art from her life with painters was that the big pictures were for museums and the little ones for art.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
shrimp-pink hair
“Johathan heard a feminine voice . . . and turned to see a big girl with shrimp-pink hair laughing at his absorption.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
Wedgewood blue
“The hotel stationery was Wedgewood blue like the wallpaper, delicately embossed with a gold crest and a motto, In virtu vinci, a nice thought, whatever it meant, for a hotel. Nice paper, too. Paper like that could make a writer of you, if anything could.”
—Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur, 1962.
a ghostly haze
“A fog had rolled in fom the bay and blurred out the meadow so the house seemed suspended in a ghostly haze, its two upstairs windows bleak eye sockets, its front porch railing the teeth in a deaths head.”
—Dawn Powell, The Wicked Pavilion, 1954.