“
She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.
”
”
Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
“
Dorian looked at the carpet, at all the threads woven together. 'What do I do now?' They were gone: the woman he'd loved--and the man he hated. He met her stare. No calculation, no coldness, no pity in those turquoise eyes. Just unflinching honesty, as there had been from the very start with her. 'What do I do?'
She had to swallow before she said. 'You light up the darkness.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
“
...so i will greet you
in a way
all loved things
are meant to be greeted
with a tear in my heart
and a poem in my eye.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
Our love will blend together like turquoise is blue and green. There’s no depression or envy when both blur into one.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
because some things
sometimes
aren't ours to hold,
but just beautiful
to listen to.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
it was the kind of moon
that I would want to
send back to my ancestors
and gift to my descendants
so they know that I too,
have been bruised...by beauty.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
He slid the photo out and raised it. The sun washed out any distinguishable characteristics. All except her eyes. He didn’t need a picture to remember those. As turquoise as the waters near Cozumel, and just as warm.
”
”
Kelly Moran (Return to Me (Covington Cove, #1))
“
i'm glad to be alive
in a world where
his gently awakening eyes
nourish the morning sun.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
I wish to stay drenched
forever
in those rain-blue eyes
in those...soul-reaching crystals
not moving a muscle
nor breathing
just
savoring
this turquoise ache
against my heart.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
some winters
will never melt
some summers
will never freeze
and some things will only
... live in poems.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
What's a rainy day
without some delicious
coffee-flavoured loneliness?
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
What's your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
She rolled her eyes. “Boring. Mine's gold-or turquoise. Or emerald.”
“Why doesn't that surprise me?”
“Because you aren't as stupid as you look.” I didn't know whether to be insulted or flattered. She didn't give me time to decide.
”
”
Shelby Mahurin (Serpent & Dove (Serpent & Dove, #1))
“
There was a scuffling and a great thump: someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly and fallen. He pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn - rimmed glasses and said, 'Am I too late? Has it started? I only just found out, so I - I -'
Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, 'So - 'ow eez leetle Teddy?'
Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice.
'I - oh yes - he's fine!' Lupin said loudly. 'Yes, Tonks is with him - at her mother's.'
Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.
'Here, I've got a picture!' Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw a tiny baby with a tuff of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera.
'I was a fool!' Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph 'I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a - a -'
'Ministry - loving, family - disowning, power - hungry moron,' said Fred.
Percy swallowed.
'Yes I was!
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
I had a dream about you last night.. You were balancing ten tiny footballs on your nose while dancing with a turquoise unicorn.
”
”
Amy Sommers (I Had a Dream About You)
“
The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
“
I pinch the book from between her fingers, examining the turquoise cover, then flicking to a random page in the middle of the book. “You’re reading porn in public? You’re disgraceful!
”
”
Hannah Grace (Icebreaker (Maple Hills, #1))
“
Let me peer out at the world
through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder,
or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.)
Let me see how your blue
is my turquoise and my orange
is your gold. Suddenly binary
stars, we have startling
gravity. Let's compare
scintillation - let's share
starlight.
”
”
Naomi Shihab Nye (Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25)
“
may my faith always be
at the end of the day
like a hummingbird...returning
to its favorite flower.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
leave me a smile
just warm enough...
to spend a million
golden afternoons in.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
She sat up, cheeks flushed and golden hair tousled. She was so beautiful that it made my soul ache. I always wished desperately that I could paint her in these moments and immortalize that look in her eyes. There was a softness in them that I rarely saw at other times, a total and complete vulnerability in someone who was normally so guarded and analytical in the rest of her life. But although I was a decent painter, capturing her on canvas was beyond my skill.
She collected her brown blouse and buttoned it up, hiding the brightness of turquoise lace with the conservative attire she liked to armor herself in. She’d done an overhaul of her bras in the last month, and though I was always sad to see them disappear, it made me happy to know they were there, those secret spots of color in her life.
”
”
Richelle Mead (The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines, #4))
“
Give me
a moon-blanket night
to keep me warm
a long-gone smile
to comfort me
a pair of rain-blue eyes
to haunt me
a simple soul
...to love me.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
there are some poems
that we leave behind
some that leave us behind
while some just live
silently
in the heart
crumble, sometimes
dwindle
disappear
die
and are reborn
when you smile again.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
…This… ’stuff’? I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? …And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.
”
”
Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada, #1))
“
Love may make you feel blue, love may make you feel green, and sometimes love may even make you feel turquoise or teal. Depression and envy get all the pretty shades of description, and I love that, but in a pink/purple kind of way.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
and the afterglow...
of your gaze...is the only
sweater that I need.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery
“
there is some aching
that will only heal...
in the mosque of sleep.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
I blink January’s lashes
and gush down December’s cheeks
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
i will forever be colliding
with a billion unnamed
undiscovered stars, each of us
on our own orbital paths.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
let me die
from having being drunk on
indigo skies, my liver...
overflowing with stars.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
He wore a tiny turquoise stud earring I always associated with Dungeons and Dragons types. Men who own ferrets and think magic tricks are cool.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Dark Places)
“
i want to
stay curled and cosied
and chocolated....forever
in my mother’s arms.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
Love, be
mystical
as the flickering
blue flame
of night
as the fully-awoken
moon
beneath cobwebs
of passing clouds
amidst chanting
high-tides
fuzzy,
as my blanket
big enough
to illuminate a hundred
thousand billion galaxies
and just small enough to fit
into my embrace.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
for all I can really do is
stand here
in September’s rain
savoring…
soaking it all in
slipping..
and simply
holding on to poetry
for dear life.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to take jobs like this. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar. I felt my guilt like a brand.... I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and complain about what their mothers made for dinner. I was always mortified. Didn't they know they were tying their mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?
”
”
Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
“
I am filled time and again
with a heart-aching wonder
when I think
of the fire
and frost of memories
of the everlastingness
of love
the solace
of family
and the power
of prayer.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
this heart yearns...
for the salt of unsmelt air
unswept thunderstorms...
unknown adventures.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
If green is envy and blue is depression, then I’m feeling quite turquoise right now. But maybe with a little luck, I’ll feel teal a little later.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (The Titanic would never have sunk if it were made out of a sink.)
“
when I finally begin to drift
into sleep
your memory is the...first
and the moonlight
the last, to kiss my face.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
The river runs every shade of blue that has ever been known to humankind: ink and turquoise and lapis, indigo, teal, cerulean, and ultramarine.
”
”
Alice Hoffman (The Dovekeepers)
“
The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.
”
”
Robert B. Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials))
“
I open my eyes to see Ry staring at me, and my desert soul erupts with turquoise water, floods and cascades and waterfalls rushing in around my rocky parts, pushing and reshaping and filling every hidden dark spot.
”
”
Kiersten White (The Chaos of Stars)
“
..i spill into
the kind of silence
only Khalil Gibran would understand.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
for those memories are now
just like these little kittens
I hold in my hands
those can be kissed
and treasured
but not held too tightly.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
I don't need these," Ian said, flashing emerald in his turquoise gaze for a split second, "when I have this."
With a casual swipe of his hand, he ripped his shirt open, causing buttons to fly everywhere. Another swipe took his sleep mask all the way off. Finally, he finger-combed his shoulder-length hair and smiled at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
"I am, after all, irresistible."
I couldn't contain my snort. "I resisted you just fine the day we met, or don't you remember me sticking a knife in your chest?"
Ian smiled with lazy wickedness. "I remember, but you seem to have forgotten that you kissed me first. And thoroughly enjoyed it.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Up from the Grave (Night Huntress, #7))
“
let my heart always be
like it is...this very moment
ready to explode...with love
a violent rainstorm...
with no stream
no ocean vast enough
to flow into.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from—who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house.
When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats.
”
”
J. Ruth Gendler (The Book of Qualities)
“
how can i ever
breathe normally again
after having been cradled
by the kind of sorrow
so silent, that it nourishes
after having been swept
by the kind of joy
so absolute, that it wounds.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
A turquoise given by a loving hand carries with it happiness and good fortune."
Arabic proverb
”
”
Judy Hall (101 Power Crystals: The Ultimate Guide to Magical Crystals, Gems, and Stones for Healing and Transformation)
“
leave me some music
that’s chocolate
for the heart.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
i am infinitely yearning
brimming
and overflowing
in words
i discover
it’s another way
for me
to be in tears.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
This winter, there will be no voices, no glimpses, no arms.
only the fabric of poetry, to keep me warm.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
“
there have been mornings
so quiet and tender
like a poem, on Thursday's lips
that I wondered
if I'd been kissed at all...
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
give me
a pillow of strong
ever-dependable shoulders
that i can bury my head in.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
I would like to do whatever it is that presses the essence from the hour.
”
”
Ellen Meloy (The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
“
we always knew
that good times came
with termination contracts
even if we weren't quite ready
to sign it.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
some poems froth
and foam and rise...
out of my morning cup of
mist-sweetened coffee.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
Seriously, it was a day's labor to look in her eyes. Crystalline irises that darkened to turquoise around the edges. Poseidon couldn't have scoured the sea and come up with a more potent color.
”
”
Kelly Moran (Charmed (Fated #2))
“
I will fill myself with the desert and the sky. I will be stone and stars, unchanging and strong and safe. The desert is complete; it is spare and alone, but perfect in its solitude. I will be the desert.
I open my eyes to see Ry staring at me, and my desert soul erupts with turquoise water, floods and cascades and waterfalls rushing in around my stone, swirling and eddying around my rocky parts, pushing and reshaping and filling every hidden dark spot.
”
”
Kiersten White (The Chaos of Stars)
“
Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home — not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.
”
”
Ellen Meloy (The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
“
you are
as fleetingly beautiful
as a mother’s tears
and a father’s pranks
a brother’s bachelorhood
and a best friend’s bad mood
a bride’s glittering jitters
and a handsome stranger’s smile.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
His smile was so soft and fine:
like gleaming old ivory,
like homesickness, like a Christmas snowfall
in the dark village, like turquoise
around which many pearls are fashioned,
like moonlight
on a favorite book.
-in Mädchenmelancholie (Girls' melancholy)
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Book of Images)
“
Bastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that occured in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermillion, lapis lazuli, and so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hill, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand.
”
”
Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
“
Breathing, it seemed to me, was a proper attribute for the mountains... mountains that quietly functioned as a single thing with a rhythmic inhale-exhale I could feel...
”
”
Ellen Meloy (The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
“
i am permanently
tanned
in the summer of poetry.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
savor
with me
the lushness
of a lingering sleep...
and last night’s
dream.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle hell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the square parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory)
“
The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one-tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens gangs up to 70 percent of its sense receptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger and recognize reward, but also—more so—for beauty.
”
”
Ellen Meloy (The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))
“
In the following days the twins went all over the city; they visited more museums, particularly the avant-garde ones. Whenever Magda spotted a Van Gogh her eyes would fill with tears, remembering the aberrational agony this great artist had gone through. The work that stirred her most was one of those many self-portraits of the artist in a sober and tormented mood; a painting built by many heavy brushstrokes of dense undiluted paint applied spirally giving the impression that the image was materializing from a turquoise background. Magda spent a full ten minutes before one such portrait. When she returned back to earth she noticed a young man beside her, as absorbed with the painting as she was and whose face looked familiar.
”
”
Anton Sammut (Memories of Recurrent Echoes)
“
The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion.
”
”
Michael Cunningham (The Hours)
“
Apakah kebahagiaan? Di manakah dapat aku temukan kebahagiaan? dan sejauh pencarianku atas makna kebahagiaan itu, aku hanya dapat merumuskannya dalam tiga laku manusia: Ingat, Ikhtiar, Ikhlas.
”
”
Titon Rahmawan (Turquoise)
“
marked
Never write with pencil,
m’ija.
It is for those
who would
erase.
Make your mark proud
and open,
Brave,
beauty folded into
its imperfection,
Like a piece of turquoise
marked.
Never write
with pencil,
m’ija.
Write with ink
or mud,
or berries grown in
gardens never owned,
or, sometimes,
if necessary,
blood.
”
”
Carmen Tafolla
“
Bad things seem to happen when you're around, don't they, Halliday?
”
”
Bobby Underwood (The Turquoise Shroud (Seth Halliday #1))
“
When I opened my case in the hotel, he gestured excitedly at my snakeskin sandals, turquoise suede wedges and silver-speckled jellies. “But you’ve loads of shoes,” he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don’t get it, do they? They’re definitely missing the shoe chromosome.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Under the Duvet: Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families and Other Calamities)
“
it is to be savored like a
seabreeze-whispered
dream...in the mysterious
blue minutes
before dawn
like a secret
infatuation.... like slow
languorous sips
of green tea... like a lingering
glimpse
a self-wrapped
paradise
like his name
upon my lips.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
The heavy black she had worn for years was gone; her dress was of turquoise-colored silk, bright and soft as the evening sky. It belled out full from her hips, and all the skirt was embroidered with thin silver threads and seed pearls and tiny crumbs of crystal, so that it glittered softly, like rain in April. She looked at the magician, speechless. “Do you like it?” “Where—” “It’s like a gown I saw a princess wear once, at the Feast of Sun-return in the New Palace in Havnor,” he said, looking at it with satisfaction. “You told me to show you something worth seeing. I show you yourself.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2))
“
Old enough to vote, too stupid to realize the consequences.
”
”
Bobby Underwood (The Turquoise Shroud (Seth Halliday #1))
“
The night stayed outside. She was surprised. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Instead, blue things flew in, pieces of glass or tin, or necklaces of blue diamond, perhaps. The air was the blue of a pool when there are shadows, when clouds cross the turquoise surface, when you suspect something contagious is leaking, something camouflaged and disrupted. There is only this infected blue enormity, elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it's never going to forget.
”
”
Kate Braverman
“
My mother is soil and rain,
clay, ash, sand, sun and moonlight.
My mother is a weeping willow—
strong, daring, dripping.
My mother is oceans so salty and wild
she can consume whole cities—
but, mostly, she chooses to be calm turquoise,
washing softly over toes in sand.
She is vast—
some places un-navigated.
She is offering, felt without words, sacred, and restful.
She grows life.
—mother/Mother Earth
”
”
Ashley Asti (The Moon and Her Sisters)
“
I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not because they would give something back to Jack and me later on, but because that was what I wanted to do--and I have loved doing it. Believe me, these have been selfish decisions.
”
”
Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place)
“
Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue, and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the duet between the turquoise and the 'nègre' - that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin - that had created the life of the bracelet.
”
”
Karen Blixen (Out of Africa)
“
may my touch
always...be tender
as i would stroke
mother's cheeks
when she cried.
”
”
Sanober Khan (Turquoise Silence)
“
When politicians continually campaign on saving something, that's when you can be absolutely certain of its demise.
”
”
Bobby Underwood (The Turquoise Shroud (Seth Halliday #1))
“
Life below the surface is neither simple nor monotonous. The subterranean, contrary to what most people think, is bustling with activity. As you tunnel deep down, you might be surprised to see the soil take on unexpected shades. Rusty red, soft peach, warm mustard, lime green, rich turquoise … Humans teach their children to paint the earth in one colour alone. They imagine the sky in blue, the grass in green, the sun in yellow and the earth entirely in brown.
”
”
Elif Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees)
“
Finally we came over a rise and I saw the Caribbean...My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (The Rum Diary)
“
Just as when we step into a mosque and its high open dome leads our minds up, up, to greater things, so a great carpet seeks to do the same under the feet. Such a carpet directs us to the magnificence of the infinite, veiled, yet never near, closer than the pulse of jugular, the sunburst that explodes at the center of a carpet signals this boundless radiance. Flowers and trees evoke the pleasures of paradise, and there is always a spot at the center of the carpet that brings calm to the heart. A single white lotus flower floats in a turquoise pool, and in this tiniest of details, there it is: a call to the best within, summoning us to the joy of union. In carpets, I now saw not just intricacies of nature and color, not just mastery of space, but a sign of the infinite design. In each pattern lay the work of a weaver of the world, complete and whole; and in each knot of daily existence lay mine.
”
”
Anita Amirrezvani (The Blood of Flowers)
“
I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.
But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.
"You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old."
I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty.
The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever.
Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..
”
”
Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed (Darcy & Rachel, #1))
“
It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. ...
In the working of silver or drilling of turquoise the Indians had exhaustless patience; upon their blankets and belts and ceremonial robes they lavished their skill and pains. But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European's desire to "master" nature, to arrange and re-create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop thought, as from an inherited caution and respect. It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse. When they hunted, it was with the same discretion; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter. They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.
”
”
Willa Cather (Death Comes for the Archbishop)
“
I know I want her body more than I want my next breath. And I know that meeting her, basking in her smiles and wanting her on me like a second skin has forever changed me. But can there ever be more? Can I spend every night counting her freckles, like I once counted the stars? Can I replace my sunrise with the vision of her sleeping beside me, fiery hair, wild and tangled all over her face? Can I swim in those too-big turquoise eyes and drown myself in her laughter every night?
I think the biggest question is, How can I not
”
”
S.L. Jennings (Taint (Sexual Education, #1))
“
As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head white and black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate, mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all just chocolate. I didn’t know any of it had anything to do with “race.” I didn't know what race was. My mother never referred to my dad as white or to me as mixed. So when the other kids in Soweto called me "white", even though I was light brown, I just thought that they had their colors mixed up, like they hadn't learned them properly. "Ah, yes, my friend. You've confused aqua with turquoise. I can see how you made that mistake. You're not the first.
”
”
Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood)
“
I breathe in...
The sights and smells
Of this city
I’ve come to know...
So well
I gaze...
Across the turquoise ocean
Where the waves
Liberate my spirit...
From its shell
I breathe in...
The brilliant sky line
Where the birds
Emerge shyly
From the dappled sunshine
I breathe in...
The gently...
Blowing winds
That soothe me
Like a mother, around her child
I breathe in...
The sounds of laughter
Pure and pretty
Like the golden-green butterfly
I’m always after
I breathe in...
The closeness,
I have always shared
With people,
Who almost knew me,
Almost cared
I breathe in...
The comfort
Of my home,
The safe walls,
The scents of childhood
On the pillows
I breathe in...the silence
Of my own heart
Aching with tenderness...
With memories..
Of home
I breathe... in...
The fragrance
Of love, and moist sand
The one...
His roses left...
On both my hands
And I just keep on breathing
Every moment
As much as I can
Preserving it, in my body
For the day
It can’t
So I breathe in..
Once again..
Feeling life's energy
Fizzing through my cells
Never knowing
What awaits me
Or what's going to happen to me..
Next
I breathe in
This moment...
Knowing it's either life
Or it's death
I close my eyes,
And breathe in
Just believing in myself.
”
”
Sanober Khan (A touch, a tear, a tempest)
“
There was a scrape and crunch of shoes, then a small, smooth hand slid toward her. But it was not Chaol or Sam or Nehemia who lay across from her, watching her with those sad turquoise eyes. Her cheek against the moss, the young princess she had been—Aelin Galathynius—reached a hand for her. “Get up,” she said softly. Celaena shook her head. Aelin strained for her, bridging that rift in the foundation of the world. “Get up.” A promise—a promise for a better life, a better world. The Valg princes paused. She had wasted her life, wasted Marion’s sacrifice. Those slaves had been butchered because she had failed—because she had not been there in time. “Get up,” someone said beyond the young princess. Sam. Sam, standing just beyond where she could see, smiling faintly. “Get up,” said another voice—a woman’s. Nehemia. “Get up.” Two voices together—her mother and father, faces grave but eyes bright. Her uncle was beside them, the crown of Terrasen on his silver hair. “Get up,” he told her gently. One by one, like shadows emerging from the mist, they appeared. The faces of the people she had loved with her heart of wildfire. And then there was Lady Marion, smiling beside her husband. “Get up,” she whispered, her voice full of that hope for the world, and for the daughter she would never seen again.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
“
Amanda bit her lip. "You're not... trying to be funny or something, are you?"
"I'm not trying to be anything!" I said.
"All right, kids," the photographer called. "On the count of three. One, two-" She broke off, straightening up from the camera with a frown. "Excuse me. You in the turquoise? I need you to face forward."
I rotated my body as best I could.
"All the way, please."
I turned so that my shoulders werre even with everybody else's, only now my head faced Gail instead of the lens.
Gail pressed her lips together. "Stop it!" she said.
"Winnie?" Mr. Hutchinson said. He walked to the end of our row. "What's going on?"
"I can't," I whispered.
"Can't what?"
"Can't move my neck, it's stuck." Tears burned in my eyes, and I blinked hard to keep them back.
"Mr. Hutchinson, she's faking," Gail said. "She's trying to be funny and she's ruining everything.
”
”
Lauren Myracle (Eleven (The Winnie Years, #2))
“
Vida Winter's appearance was not calculated for concealment. She was an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess. Her stiff figure rose regally out of a profusion of fat purple and red cushions. Draped around her shoulders, the folds of the turquoise-and-green cloth that had cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick. In her lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles; only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous tone.
”
”
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
“
I never dreamed that she meant lights. Sparkling. Shimmering. Waves of light. We could see them from the front of the cafe. Besides the few customers, everyone who lived on the street was gathered inside. And I mean everyone, even strange little Esther. She'd squeezed herself into the darkest corner of the room, sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. But even her face was in awe. Silvers. Pearls. Iridescent pinks. They now sprayed out into the sunless room and hit the ceiling. The walls. The floor. Glowing copper. Gilded orange. And all kinds or gold. Sequins of light that swirled and spun through the air. Cascades of light flowing in, breaking up, and rolling like fluid diamonds over the worn tile. Emerald. Turquoise. Sapphire. It went on for hours. I looked over there and there were tears streaming down Gabe's wrinkled face: God bless you, Eve. And finally only the muted glow of a cool aquamarine. Then we heard the baby's first thin cry- and the place went wild.
”
”
Gloria Naylor (Bailey's Café)
“
Ian stared until she disappeared inside the elevator. Then he glanced back at me.
"Don't fret, poppet. I'll get her."
"We need to do this discreetly. If I wanted to make a colossal scene, I'd just drag her off kicking and screaming now," I said, not adding, "dumb ass" only because he was family.
"She'll come without a fuss," Ian said with confidence.
"You can't green-eye her in the elevator, it'll have video surveillance. So will the garage," I retorted.
"I don't need these," Ian said, flashing emerald in his turquoise gaze for a split second, "when I have this."
With a casual swipe of his hand, he ripped his shirt open, causing buttons to fly everywhere. Another swipe took his sleep mask all the way off. Finally, he finger-combed his shoulder-lenght hair and smiled at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
"I am after all, irresistible.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Up from the Grave (Night Huntress, #7))
“
Paper: Some inexpensive plain bond paper A pad of Strathmore Drawing Paper, 80 lb., 11" × 14" Pencils: A #2 ordinary yellow writing pencil with an eraser at the top A #4 drawing pencil—Faber-Castell, Prismacolor Turquoise, or other brand Marking pens: Sharpie (or other brand) fine point non-permanent black A second marker, fine point permanent black Graphite stick: #4 General’s is a good brand, or other brand Pencil sharpener: A small handheld sharpener is fine Erasers: A Pink Pearl eraser A Staedtler Mars white plastic eraser A kneaded eraser—Lyra, Design, or other brand Masking tape: 3M Scotch Low Tack Artist Tape Clips: Two 1-inch-wide black clips Drawing board: A firm surface large enough to hold your 11" × 14" drawing paper—about 15" × 18" is a good size. This can be improvised from a kitchen cutting board, a piece of foam board, a piece of Masonite, or thick cardboard. Picture plane: This too can be improvised using an 8" × 10" piece of glass (you will need to tape the edges), or an 8" × 10" piece of clear plastic, about 1⁄16" thick. Viewfinders: You will make these from black paper—“construction” paper is a good thickness, or you could use thin black cardboard. You will find instructions for making the viewfinders here A small mirror: About 5" × 7" that can be taped to a wall, or any available wall mirror.
”
”
Betty Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: The Definitive Edition)
“
But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.
Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday's washing d as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry.
”
”
T.H. White (The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4))
“
In genealogy you might say that interest lies in the eye of the gene holder. The actual descendants are far more intrigued with it all than the listeners, who quickly sink into a narcoleptic coma after the second or third great-great-somebody kills a bear or beheads Charles I, invents the safety pin or strip-mines Poland, catalogues slime molds, dances flamenco, or falls in love with a sheep. Genealogy is a forced march through stories. Yet everyone loves stories, and that is one reason we seek knowledge of our own blood kin.
Through our ancestors we can witness their times. Or, we think, there might be something in their lives, an artist’s or a farmer’s skill, an affection for a certain landscape, that will match or explain something in our own. If we know who they were, perhaps we will know who we are. And few cultures have been as identity-obsessed as ours. So keen is this fascination with ancestry, genealogy has become an industry. Family reunions choke the social calendar. Europe crawls with ancestor-seeking Americans. Your mother or your spouse or your neighbors are too busy to talk to you because they are on the Internet running “heritage quests.” We have climbed so far back into our family trees, we stand inches away from the roots where the primates dominate.
”
”
Ellen Meloy (The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (Pulitzer Prize Finalist))