“
What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly.
Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.'
'But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?'
There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life.
'Then you must find a way to live with it.
”
”
Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1))
“
That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.
”
”
Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)
“
He uncovered the boat, his hands working the knots like he'd been doing it his whole life. Under the tarp was an old steel rowboat with no oars. The boat had been painted dark blue at one point, but the hull was so crusted with tar and salt it looked like one massive nautical bruise.
On the bow, the name Pax was still readable, lettered in gold. Painted eyes drooped sadly at the water level, as if the boat were about to fall asleep. On board were two benches, some steel wool, an old cooler, and a mound of frayed rope with one end tied to the mooring. At the bottom of the boat, a plastic bag and two empty Coke cans floated in several inches of scummy water.
"Behold," Frank said. "The mighty Roman navy.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
“
To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.
”
”
Alan Moore
“
Love them all," said Renoir. "That is the secret, young man. Love them all." The painter let go of his arm and shrugged. "Then, even if your paintings are shit, you will have loved them all.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
The Painting is not shit,' said Lucien.
'I know,' said Henri. 'That was just part of the subterfuge. I am of royal lineage; subterfuge is one of the many talents we carry in our blood, along with guile and hemophilia.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
Not long, not long my father said
Not long shall you be ours
The Raven King knows all too well
Which are the fairest flowers.
The priest was all too worldly
Though he prayed and rang his bell
The Raven King three candles lit
The priest said it was well
Her arms were all too feeble
Though she claimed to love me so
The Raven King stretched out his hand
She sighed and let me go
The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King goes by
For always and for always
I pray remember me
Upon the moors, beneath the stars
With the King’s wild company.
”
”
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)
“
'Paint only what you see,' his hero Millet had admonished.
'Imagination is a burden to a painter,' Auguste Renoir had told him. 'Painters are craftsmen, not storytellers. Paint what you see.'
Ah, but what they hadn't said, hadn't warned him about, was how much you could see.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
There... Poor little things. You see them? Standing with their numbers on their blank, indifferent faces, Nuremberg in miniature, the ranks of painted wooden men... Poor dominoes. Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers down it goes.
”
”
Alan Moore (V for Vendetta #8 (of 10))
“
Autumn in the Highlands would be brief—a glorious riot of color blazing red across the moors and gleaming every shade of gold in the forests of sheltered glens. Those achingly beautiful images would be painted again and again across the hills and in the shivering waters of the mountain tarns until the harsh winds of winter sent the last quaking leaf to its death on the frozen ground.
”
”
Elizabeth Stuart (Heartstorm)
“
NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE
To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.
”
”
Rochelle Distelheim
“
I'm painting moments. Unrepeatable, singular moments of light.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
My favourite book is my dictionary. It excites me. Each time I open it, the endless possibilities come tumbling out. It’s Alice falling into Wonderland. It’s an artist’s paint box. It’s a new day.
”
”
Stephen Moore
“
couldn’t be more Scottish if it was painted blue and smelled of burning peat and your ginger sister.
”
”
Christopher Moore (The Serpent of Venice)
“
Love is art, not truth. It's like painting a scenery.' These are the things one takes from mothers. Once they die, of course, you get the strand of pearls, the blue quilt, some of the original wedding gifts - a tray shellacked with the invitation, an old rusted toaster - but the touches and the words and the moaning the night she dies, these are what you seize, save, carry around in little invisible envelopes, opening them up quickly, like a carnival huckster, giving the world a peek. They will not stay quiet. No matter how you try.
”
”
Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)
“
The Holy Mother has many faces, but you know it's her from her blue cloak. She is said to be the spirit in all women."
"Look, here she is naked and the baby Jesus has wings, " said Lucien.
"That is not the Holy Mother, that's Venus and that's not Jesus, that is Cupid, the Roman god of love."
"Wouldn't she have the spirit of the Holy Mother as well?"
"No, she is a pagan myth."
"What about Maman? Is the spirit of the Holy Mother in her?"
"No, Lucien, your mother is also a pagan myth. Come, look at these paintings of wrestlers.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacre Blue)
“
At the pet store he picked out two painted turtles, each about as big around as a mayonnaise-jar lid. He bought them a large kidney shaped dish that had its own little island, a plastic palm tree, some aquatic plants, and a snail. The snail, presumably, to bolster the self-esteem of the turtles: "You think we're slow? Look at that guy." To store up the snail's morale in the same way, there was a rock.
”
”
Christopher Moore
“
Oh, they said God was dead, all those beatniks and snooty-ass Frenchmen. Not me. I knew better. I said to them, "Wait, boys! Don't break cover yet awhile. He might be faking. I mean, they thought Saddam was dead. And the novel. And Glenn Close in that last scene of Fatal Attraction." That's what I said. But did they listen? Ohh no. They went right ahead and organized God's funeral. Well, don't count your chickens before they come home to roost...
”
”
Alan Moore (Promethea, Vol. 5)
“
It seemed wealthy consumers were much more worthy of protection than working-class girls; after all, dial-painting was still going on, even in 1933.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
I would paint more farms," said Toulouse-Lautrec, "but they always put them so far from the bar.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
There was nothing hazardous in the paint, the doctors promised:
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
the delicate work of dial-painting; records show that some were as young as eleven.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
They will come, not to paint the bay and the sea and the boots and the moors, but the warmth of the sun and the colour of the wind. A whole new concept. Such stimulation. Such vitality.
”
”
Rosamunde Pilcher
“
We put the brushes in our mouths,”16 Katherine said, quite simply. It was a technique called lip-pointing, inherited from the first girls who had worked in the industry, who came from china-painting factories.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
These dogs are not fighting."
"Yes they are. Like the paintings we saw in the Louvre," said Lucien. "Gecko-Roman wrestling Father called it."
"Ah, of course," said Pissarro, as if it had become clear. "Yes, Gecko-Roman dog wrestling. Superb! I presume you haven't shown your wrestling dogs to Madame Lessard, then.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacre Blue)
“
They put the brush to their lips…dipped it in the radium…and painted the dials. It was a “lip, dip, paint routine”7: all the girls copied each other, mirror images that lipped and dipped and painted all day long.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
walking across the moors made me feel as if I’d stepped primly out of a Jane Austen book or an Impressionist painting. But I bet even Elizabeth Bennet had never punted a rabbit before, and my current count was 137.
”
”
Delilah S. Dawson (Wicked as They Come (Blud, #1))
“
We drove over a canal and from atop the bridge I could see dozens of houseboats moored along the water. It looked nothing like America. It looked like an old painting, but real—everything achingly idyllic in the morning light—and I thought about how wonderfully strange it would be to live in a place where almost everything had been built by the dead.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
Writing is like painting with words, the paper is the canvas, the pen is the brush, the words are the colors and the verbs, nouns and adjectives are the blending of the hues that add depth to the picture you are creating.
-Reed Abbitt Moore-
”
”
Reed Abbitt Moore (Piggy Sense!: Save it for a rainy day)
“
The amount of radium in the paint may have been small, but by the time you had been swallowing it every single day for three or four or five years in a row, there was enough there to cause you damage—particularly when, as the Drinkers had already realized, radium was even more potent internally, and headed straight for your bones.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
Theophilus Crowe wrote bad free-verse poetry and played a jimbai drum while sitting on a rock by the ocean. He could play sixteen chords on the guitar and knew five Bob Dylan songs all the way through, allowing for a dampening buzz any time he had to play a bar chord. He had tried his hand at painting, sculpture, and pottery and had even played a minor part in the Pine Cove Little Theater’s revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. In all of these endeavors, he had experienced a meteoric rise to mediocrity and quit before total embarrassment and self-loathing set in. Theo was cursed with an artist’s soul but no talent. He possessed the angst and the inspiration, but not the means to create.
”
”
Christopher Moore (The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Pine Cove, #2))
“
I’m more visual than verbal, really. The painting and so forth.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu)
“
Blum was worth his money. Later, he would try to find out the exact chemicals in the luminous paint, although to no avail.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
One dial-painter, known as a “lively Italian girl,”13 painted the material all over her teeth one night before a date, wanting a smile that would knock him dead.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
She walked the spiral corridor, running her hand along the painted horizon - sea, beach, dunes, woods, moors - the journey of her people from over the sea. The story of the Anglisc, woven with Woden back to the dawn of their songs. Ships. Fire. Bright swords. Kin and kine. Woods and wold. Hearth and home. Where was Christ in this? Christ didn't fight. Christ didn't farm.
”
”
Nicola Griffith (Hild (The Hild Sequence, #1))
“
She was extremely conscientious and would even take dials home to paint, carefully tracing the numerals in that cramped house next to the railroad tracks that she shared with her large family.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
They spent years putting the tiniest of details on these works of art. It reminded me of what we try to do with ourselves. We spend years trying to paint our personalities to look a certain way or to carve memories into our souls.
”
”
Alex Z. Moores (Living in Water)
“
When I started to draw, most of my influences were from other painters and illustrators, so I was drawing landscape at second hand, really. The trees were Rackham trees, or trees that I had seen in paintings rather than from my own observation...and I started to feel this was a real lack in my work. Everything was too generalised, and not based on real experience. Then in 1975, after having worked for some years in London as a book cover illustrator mainly, I came down to Devon and stayed with some friends up on the moor. In the course of this one weekend, wandering around the moor, finding rivers and ancient woods, I realised that everything that I would ever want to draw was actually here. There was so much richness in the texture and forms of these fantastic trees...and I decided in the course of that weekend to come and live here. I looked at a couple of houses, found one, and made an offer on it, all in that one weekend!
”
”
Alan Lee
“
Again, we can see the importance of imaginal practices such as journals, dream work, poetry, painting, and therapy aimed at exploring images in dream and life. These methods keep us actively engaged in the mythologies that are the stuff of our own lives. The
”
”
Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life)
“
Peg started out, as did all the new girls, by painting the Big Ben alarm clocks that Westclox produced. He was “a rugged handsome fellow”9 of a clock, with a dial that measured about 10 centimeters across, giving him nice big numbers for the less experienced girls to paint.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
True, but there was a plaque depicted in the painting, hung around the figure's neck, and on it was writing in Sumerian cuneiform. As you know, in addition to my other studies, I am an amateur necrolinguist - "
"It means the likes to lick the dead," explained Henri.
"It means he studies dead languages," corrected Lucien.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
“
Is it always this awkward?" Sara asked. Her voice was hushed.
Derek turned to look at her, his gaze falling to the white rose in her hands. She had taken it from the arrangement of hothouse flowers. Nervously her fingers ruffled the fragile petals.
Self-consciously Sara sniffed the pale blossom and began to insert it back into the huge vase. "It's nice to have roses in January," she murmured. "Nothing in the world has such a lovely scent."
She was so innocently beautiful, with the disordered waves of her hair falling around her face. His muscles tightened in response. He would like to have her painted this way, standing by the table with her head turned toward him, the white flower caught in her fingers. "Bring it here," he said.
She obeyed, coming to him and handing him the rose. He closed his fingers around the plump head of the flower and pulled gently, freeing the petals from their tenuous moorings. Tossing aside the desecrated stem, he opened his hand over the bed. The petals scattered in a fragrant shower. Sara drew in a quick breath, staring at him as if mesmerized.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Dreaming of You (The Gamblers of Craven's, #2))
“
And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Men are its philosophies. They lived, these Spaniards of the Golden Age; they felt and did; they did not think. Life was what they sought and found, life in its turmoil, its fervour and its variety. Passion was the seed that brought them forth and passion was the flower they bore. But passion alone cannot give rise to a great art. In the arts the Spaniards invented nothing. They did little in any of those they practised, but give a local colour to a virtuosity they borrowed from abroad. Their literature, as I have ventured to remark, was not of the highest rank; they were taught to paint by foreign masters, but, inapt pupils, gave birth to one painter only of the very first class; they owed their architecture to the Moors, the French and the Italians, and the works themselves produced were best when they departed least from their patterns. Their preeminence was great, but it lay in another direction: it was a preeminence of character. In this I think they have been surpassed by none and equalled only by the ancient Romans. It looks as though all the energy, all the originality, of this vigorous race had been disposed to one end and one end only, the creation of man. It is not in art that they excelled, they excelled in what is greater than art--in man. But it is thought that has the last word.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Don Fernando)
“
I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.
”
”
Edward Kelsey Moore (The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (The Supremes, #1))
“
NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE
-by Rochelle Distelheim
To be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wife
who washes the socks and the children,
and returns phone calls and library books and types.
In other words, the reason there are so many more
Men Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.
It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.
And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.
Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theater
matinees--on Saturdays?
Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,
chicken pox or chipped teeth?
Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fender
his teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.
Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.
And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-three
for Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.
I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,
and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricycler
On becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.
Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,
tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,
and I'll tell you no muse is a good muse
unless she also helps with the laundry.
-Rochelle Distelheim
===============================
”
”
Rochelle Distelheim (Sadie in Love)
“
Like many dogs, young Sirius found human music quite excruciating. An isolated vocal or instrumental theme was torture enough to him; but when several voices or instruments combined, he seemed to lose control of himself completely. His fine auditory discrimination made even well-executed solos seem to him badly out of tune. Harmony and the combination of several themes resulted for him in hideous cacophony. Elizabeth and the children would sometimes sing rounds, for instance when they were coming downt he moor after a picnic. Sirius invariably had to give up his usual far-ranging course and draw into the party to howl. The indignant children would chase him away, but as soon as the singing began again he would return and once more give tongue. On one occasion Tamsy, who was the most seriously musical member of the family, cried imploringly, 'Sirius, do either keep quiet or keep away! Why cant't you let us enjoy ourselves?' He replied, 'But how can you like such a horrible jarring muddle of sweet noises? I have to come to you because they're so sweet, and I have to howl because it's a mess, and because-oh because it might be so lovely.' Once he said, 'If I were to paint a picture could you just keep away? Wouldn't you go crazy because of the all-wrongness of the colour? Well, sounds are far more exciting to me than your queer colour is to you.
”
”
Olaf Stapledon
“
Everything and Nothing*
There was no one inside him; behind his face
(which even in the bad paintings of the time
resembles no other) and his words (which were
multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated
turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a
dream someone had failed to dream. At first he
thought that everyone was like him, but the
surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance
to whom he began to describe that hollowness
showed him his error, and also let him know,
forever after, that an individual ought not to
differ from its species. He thought at one point
that books might hold some remedy for his
condition, and so he learned the "little Latin
and less Greek" that a contemporary would
later mention. Then he reflected that what he
was looking for might be found in the
performance of an elemental ritual of humanity,
and so he allowed himself to be initiated by
Anne Hathaway one long evening in June.
At twenty-something he went off to London.
Instinctively, he had already trained himself to
the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so
that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered.
In London he found the calling he had been
predestined to; he became an actor, that person
who stands upon a stage and plays at being
another person, for an audience of people who
play at taking him for that person. The work of
a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to
him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but
when the last line was delivered and the last
dead man applauded off the stage, the hated
taste of unreality would assail him. He would
cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to
being nobody.
Haunted, hounded, he began imagining
other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his
body, in whorehouses and taverns around
London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived
inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the
admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates
the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor
with the witches who are also the Fates, the
Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men
as that man—that man whose repertoire, like
that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the
appearances of being. From time to time he
would leave a confession in one corner or
another of the work, certain that it would not be
deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he
plays the part of many, and Iago says, with
curious words, I am not what I am. The
fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and
performing inspired him to famous passages.
For twenty years he inhabited that guided
and directed hallucination, but one morning he
was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of
being so many kings that die by the sword and
so many unrequited lovers who come together,
separate, and melodiously expire. That very
day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a
week he had returned to his birthplace, where
he recovered the trees and the river of his
childhood and did not associate them with
those others, fabled with mythological allusion
and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated.
He had to be somebody; he became a retired
businessman who'd made a fortune and had an
interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It
was in that role that he dictated the arid last
will and testament that we know today, from
which he deliberately banished every trace of
sentiment or literature. Friends from London
would visit his re-treat, and he would once
again play the role of poet for them.
History adds that before or after he died, he
discovered himself standing before God, and
said to Him: I , who have been so many men in
vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice
answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not
I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare,
dreamed your own work, and among the
forms of my dream are you, who like me, are
many, yet no one.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
Sigtryggr held out a hand to pull me from the ditch. His one eye was bright with the same joy I had seen on Ceaster’s ramparts. ‘I would not want you as an enemy, Lord Uhtred,’ he said.
‘Then don’t come back, Jarl Sigtryggr,’ I said, clasping his forearm as he clasped mine.
‘I will be back,’ he said, ‘because you will want me to come back.’
‘I will?’
He turned his head to gaze at his ships. One ship was close to the shore, held there by a mooring line tied to a stake. The prow of the ship had a great dragon painted white and in the dragon’s claw was a red axe. The ship waited for Sigtryggr, but close to it, standing where the grass turned to the river bank’s mud, was Stiorra. Her maid, Hella, was already aboard the dragon-ship.
Æthelflaed had been watching Eardwulf’s death, but now saw Stiorra by the grounded ship. She frowned, not sure she understood what she saw. ‘Lord Uhtred?’
‘My lady?’
‘Your daughter,’ she began, but did not know what to say.
‘I will deal with my daughter,’ I said grimly. ‘Finan?’
My son and Finan were both staring at me, wondering what I would do. ‘Finan?’ I called.
‘Lord?’
‘Kill that scum,’ I jerked my head towards Eardwulf’s followers, then I took Sigtryggr by the elbow and walked him towards his ship. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ Æthelflaed called again, sharper this time.
I waved a dismissive hand, and otherwise ignored her. ‘I thought she disliked you,’ I said to Sigtryggr.
‘We meant you to think that.’
‘You don’t know her,’ I said.
‘You knew her mother when you met her?’
‘This is madness,’ I said.
‘And you are famous for your good sense, lord.’
Stiorra waited for us. She was tense. She stared at me defiantly and said nothing.
I felt a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes. I told myself it was the small smoke drifting from the Norsemen’s abandoned campfires. ‘You’re a fool,’ I told her harshly.
‘I saw,’ she said simply, ‘and I was stricken.’
‘And so was he?’ I asked, and she just nodded. ‘And the last two nights,’ I asked, ‘after the feasting was over?’ I did not finish the question, but she answered it anyway by nodding again.
‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ I said, and I embraced her, holding her close. ‘But it is my choice whom you marry,’ I went on. I felt her stiffen in my arms, ‘And Lord Æthelhelm wants to marry you.’
I thought she was sobbing, but when I pulled back from the embrace I saw she was laughing. ‘Lord Æthelhelm?’ she asked.
‘You’ll be the richest widow in all Britain,’ I promised her.
She still held me, looking up into my face. She smiled, that same smile that had been her mother’s. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I swear on my life that I will accept the man you choose to be my husband.’
She knew me. She had seen my tears and knew they were not caused by smoke. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘You will be a peace cow,’ I said, ‘between me and the Norse. And you’re a fool. So am I. And your dowry,’ I spoke louder as I stepped back, ‘is Eardwulf’s money.’ I saw I had smeared her pale linen dress with Eardwulf’s blood. I looked at Sigtryggr. ‘I give her to you,’ I said, ‘so don’t disappoint me.
”
”
Bernard Cornwell (The Empty Throne (The Saxon Stories, #8))
“
It was as if his face had washed up on his head, like a tide, and left its mark, and then some artistic boy had come along to the same beach with a little paint.
”
”
Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs)
“
...his hair was a production, of nature and art: it was as if his face had washed up on his head, like a tide, and left its mark, and then some artistic boy had come along to the same beach with a little paint.
”
”
Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs)
“
near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the
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Dennis Lehane (Since We Fell)
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It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets.
Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek.
Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.
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Laura Brooks (Greek Isles (Timeless Places))
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And, oh! It was a beautiful evening, as heather-purple and gorse-gold as the moorland around them, and the sky above was that stark shade of blue that looked neither dark nor light enough to be true. If it were a painting, a critic might have said that the colours were all wrong. Jack, of course, knew better than that. He had spend many an evening out on the moor. And Meadowsweet – oh how she loved it.
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Chiara Kilian (The First Tale of the Tinners' Rabbits)
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He was talking about the clearances, the evictions by the chiefs and landlords who wanted to cash in on the land. It had taken years, but the Highlands were eventually emptied—that is, the fertile parts. Enormous sheep farms replaced some crofts, and others were turned into playgrounds—grouse moors and baronial estates. This was also a major reason for the tremendous number of Scottish emigrants, dispersed across the world between 1780 and 1860. So what had seemed to me no more than an early chapter in a history of Scotland, or a melodramatic painting by Landseer, was a lingering injustice. The cruelty of the clearances was still remembered, because many people who had been made poor still remained where they had been dumped.
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Paul Theroux (The Kingdom by the Sea)
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seemed wealthy consumers were much more worthy of protection than working-class girls; after all, dial-painting was still going on, even in 1933.
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Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
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He cared little for painting. In fact, he hadn’t stood before an easel since school days. But if pretending to be interested in art kept a genuine smile on Amelia Barrett’s face, he would learn to like it.
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Sarah E. Ladd (The Heiress of Winterwood (Whispers on the Moors, # 1))
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It was a forged Titian that somebody had painted over another old painting, when they scraped the forged Titian away they found some worthless old painting underneath it, the forger had used it because it was an old canvas. But then there was something under that worthless painting, and they scraped it off and underneath that they found a Titian, a real Titian that had been there all the time. It was as though when the forger was working, and he didn’t know the original was underneath, I mean he didn’t know he knew it, but it knew, I mean something knew. I mean, do you see what I mean? That underneath that the original is there, that the real … thing is there, and on the surface you … if you can only … see what I mean? (450
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Steven Moore (William Gaddis: Expanded Edition)
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Okay, I’ll just go on to the next card.” He picks one up, pretending to read. “It says here, ‘Darling, is there life on Mars? Yes or no.’ ”
Mack has gone back to thinking about the paintings. “I say no,” he says absently.
“Hmmm,” says Quilty, putting the card down. “I think the answer is yes. Look at it this way: they’re sure there are ice crystals. And where there is ice, there is water. And where there is water, there is waterfront property. And where there is waterfront property, there are Jews!” He claps his hands and sinks back onto the acrylic quilting of the bedspread. “Where are you?” he asks finally, waving his arms out in the air.
“I’m here,” says Mack. “I’m right here.” But he doesn’t move.
“You’re here? Well, good. At least you’re not at my cousin Esther’s Martian lake house with her appalling husband, Howard. Though sometimes I wonder how they’re doing. How are they? They never come to visit. I frighten them so much.” He pauses. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
“What do I look like?
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Lorrie Moore (Birds of America: Stories)
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When we paint the picture of our salvation for others to see, we may use different colors, textures, and shapes on the edges of the parchment. But in the center can only be a cross. Anything else cheapens grace and cheats the believer.
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Beth Moore (To Live Is Christ: Joining Paul's Journey of Faith)
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Perhaps I’ll call it Luncheon on the Grass, then,” said Manet. “Since I’ve clearly forgotten to paint the model wet enough.
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Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu)
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A range of competing emotions rose inside Alice. One was fear: there would be hell to pay when Peter saw this. But some other emotion was present, too. And at last she realized, with a pang, that it was jealously. Never once in Alice's life had she ever felt the freedom to do something like this. To simply decide - I'm going to paint a mural today - and then undertake the project.
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Liz Moore (The God of the Woods)
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But my mother loved the dry heat. The cold nights with so many stars the sky looked fake, like a mural some rich person would paint on his ceiling. She seemed to be healed by it. She didn't speak to me for three whole days. When she agreed to return to civilization I could see how sorry she was to leave the wilderness. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't gone with her. Would she ever have come back?
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Mar Romasco Moore (I Am the Ghost in Your House)
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The animals painted on the walls of Lascaux are not there in the same way as the fissures and limestone formations. But they are not elsewhere. Pushed forward here, held back there, held up by the wall's mass they use so adroitly, they spread around the wall without ever breaking from their elusive moorings in it. I would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For I do not look at it as I do at a thing; I do not fix it in its place. My gaze wanders in it as in the halos of Being. It is more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (L'Œil et l'Esprit)
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After the better part of a month working in the fringed cold, we were ready. There were still a few minor things to do but the ship was now completely primed and painted, with her name outlined with spot welds on each side of the bow and the stern. That morning, prior to sailing from Boston, I slipped ashore and bought a case of Budweiser beer. There was a lot of activity around the ship so no one noticed when I returned with beer in my sea bag. I distributed the three six-packs I had sold to classmates and the remaining one was for the guys in my room. I hung the brew out of the porthole, wrapped and tied securely in a towel. For us the porthole wasn’t just a small round window to the outside, it was also our refrigerator for keeping things cold!
We didn’t get going until after dark, expecting to be on the Penobscot River back in Maine by daybreak. I was on the afterdeck trying to free lines that were solidly frozen from the cold, when I felt a jarring under foot. Looking over the railings, I saw one of the tugboats right outside of where our room was. He had bumped into us, and now with his engines roaring in reverse, was backing down. What the hell was going on? Instinctively, I knew what had happened. I dropped the mooring lines onto the deck and left the flaking down of them to others. I quickly ran to our room and opened the porthole, confirming what I already knew. Our beer was gone! Damn it, the tugboat was disappearing into the dark and they would be the ones drinking our beer that night! At least we still had some cold pizza. Free of the dock, we headed down the Inner Harbor, past Logan International Airport and Deer Island towards the Atlantic. We had worked hard to get our ship ready, and had every reason to be proud, as we steamed out of Boston Harbor that night. We were on our way back to Castine and to the Academy. By the next morning, we were sailing under the Waldo-Hancock Bridge into Bucksport Harbor.
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Hank Bracker
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Until the ultimate relationship arrives, let your mirror image be the face of Christ. Your bridal portrait is being painted one day at a time.
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Beth Moore (Breaking Free Day by Day)
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We speed through the streets past modern buildings and ancient architecture. Gazing through the taxi window Rome becomes a wet painting someone has wiped a hand across.
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Kevin James Moore (The Go-Go Girl)
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I placed the tubes of paint on the palette and selected a small canvas. I prepared the palette with an assortment of colors, then closed my eyes, remembering the way the moors had looked when I rode into town with Lord Livingston. He'd been so different on that drive into the village before he left for London. Had that been the side of him that Lady Anna had fallen in love with? I dipped my brush into the black paint and then mixed in some white until I'd created the right shade of gray, then touched the brush to the canvas. I loved the feeling of the paintbrush in my hand. He'd been kind to buy me the art supplies, but I remembered how he'd behaved in the dining room and at other times before that. 'How could he be so cruel, so unfeeling?'
Once I'd painted the clouds, I moved on to the hills, mixing a sage green color for the grass and then dotting the foreground with a bit of lavender to simulate the heather. I stepped back from the canvas and frowned. It needed something else. But what? I looked out the window to the orchard.
The Middlebury Pink. 'Who took the page from Lady Anna's book? Lord Livingston?' I dabbed my brush into the brown paint and created the structure of the tree. Next I dotted the branches with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, saucer-size blossoms with pink tips.
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Sarah Jio (The Last Camellia)
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For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery
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Lorrie Moore (Self-Help)