the prisoners they take are fettered in gold

“I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us; and for as much red copper as I can bring, I’ll have thrice the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans and their chamber-pots are pure gold; and all the chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold.”

—Ben Jonson, John Marston & George Chapman, Eastward Ho, 1605.

Christmas cards for computer geeks

a couple of Verveines

“ ‘She said: “Yes. I’d like to have a different kind of liqueur with my coffee. Something I’ve never heard of. Any suggestions?”
    ‘So I described Verveine; I thought of it because it is the identical green of her eyes. It’s made out of a million-odd mountain herbs; I’ve never found it anywhere outside France and damn few places here. Delicious; but with a kick like bad moonshine. So we had a couple of Verveines, and Kate said: “Yes, indeed. That certainly is different.” ’ ”

—Truman Capote, “Unspoiled Monsters”, Answered Prayers, 1987.

There is always something wrong with redheads

“There is always something wrong with redheads. The hair is kinky, or it’s the wrong color, too dark and tough, or too pale and sickly. And the skin—it rejects the elements: wind, sun, everything discolors it. A really beautiful redhead is rarer than a flawless forty-carat pigeon-blood ruby—or a flawed one for that matter. But none of this was true of Kate. Her hair was like a winter sunset, lighted with the last of the pale afterglow.”

—Truman Capote, “Unspoiled Monsters”, Answered Prayers, 1987.

Prop 8 – The Musical

the green glow of the alarm’s digital spears

“Though there was an episode, too unbeveled to have been a dream, in which one wee-houred morning, late last year, Bonnie and I both half-awoke. In sync. In this bed. Half-awoke, sat up, and looked at each other’s thick outlines in the green glow of the alarm’s digital spears; we looked at each other, first with recognition, then a synchronized shock: looked shocked at these each others and shouted, in unison, ‘WHAT?’ and fell on our pillows and back to a puffy sleep. Compared notes at breakfast and both came away shaken.”

—David Foster Wallace, ‘Say Never’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.

The sky is an eye

“The sky is an eye.
    The dusk and the dawn are the blood that feeds the eye.
    The night is the eye’s drawn lid.
    Each day the lid again comes open, disclosing blood, and the blue iris of a prone giant.”

—David Foster Wallace, “Church Not Made With Hands”, Brief Encounters With Hideous Men, 1999.

Diamond Shreddies

What went on in No.1’s brain?

“What went on in No.1’s brain? He painted to himself a cross-section through that brain, painted neatly with grey water-colour on a sheet of paper stretched on a drawing-board with drawing-pins. The whorls of grey matter swelled to entrails, they curled round one another like muscular snakes, became vague and misty like the spiral nebulae on astronomical charts. . . . What went on in the inflated grey whorls? One knew everything about the far-away nebulae, but nothing about the whorls.”

—Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941.

ginger-bread figures at a fair

“ ‘ “It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch. For consumption by the masses, the political process must be coloured like ginger-bread figures at a fair.” ’ ”

—Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941.