February 2010 Archives

And I thought this song was about me.

“Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, great masses of clouds stood piled up and bathed in a mist of blood. A crimson crack like an open would zigzagged between them, with a piece of dark red sun showing at the bottom. Heyst cast an indifferent glance a the ill-omened chaos of the sky.”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“ ‘What do you think of smoke by day and a loom of fire at night? There’s a volcano in full blast near that island—enough to guide almost a blind man. What more do you want? An active volcano to steer by!’ ”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by . . .”

—John Masefield, “Sea Fever”, 1902.

“The stretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow, lustrous and empty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and opaque under the sun.”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“Behind his back the sun, touching the water, was like a disc of iron cooled to a dull red glow, ready to start rolling round the circular steel plate of the sea. . . .”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“If you think the potential consequences of bad typography are merely aesthetic—think again.”

—www.typographyforlawyers.com

“The eyes of Martin Ricardo gleamed phosphorescent in the half-light of the room screened from the heat and glare of the tropics.”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“Zangiacomo conducted. He wore a white mess-jacket, a black dress waistcoat, and white trousers. His longish, tousled hair and his great beard were purple-black. He was horrible.”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemcial relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as ‘black diamonds.’ Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property.”

—Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, 1915.

“I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. It’s really ironical, because I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head—the right side—is full of millions of gray hairs. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve.”

—J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

“People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.”

—J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

“It’s no fun to be yellow. Maybe I’m not all yellow. I don’t know. I think maybe I’m just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn’t give much of a damn if they lose their gloves.”

—J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

“ ‘Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,’ he said. ‘That’s a deer shooting hat.’
    ‘Like hell it is.’ I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. ‘This is a people shooting hat,’ I said. ‘I shoot people in this hat.’ ”

—J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951.

By way of Ohmidog!

“Mary Talbot . . . was lovely. She had red hair with green lights in it. Her skin was golden with a green under cast and her eyes were green with little golden spots. Her face was triangular, with wide cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and her chin was pointed. She had long dancer’s legs and dancer’s feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.”

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945.

“Dora is a great woman, a great big woman with flaming orange hair and a taste for Nile green evening dresses.”

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945.

“Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora’s—the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row.”

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945.

“It is the hour of the pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.”

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 1945.