Storytelling 110: Colors

Pursuit of Beauty

Jan 10, 2024

“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”

—Wassily Kandinsky

“Sunset is still my favorite color, and rainbow is second.”

—Mattie Stepanek

“Without black, no color has any depth. But if you mix black with everything, suddenly there's shadow — no, not just shadow, but fullness. You've got to be willing to mix black into your palette if you want to create something that's real.”

—Amy Grant

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

—Honore de Balzac

Sometimes red is not enough.

Crimson paint drips down the castle exterior… beneath the strobing lights of the nightclub, a corrupt, grotesque politician kisses the ruby-red lips of the prostitute sent to drug and kidnap him… coruscating flames leap across a distant battlefield, gleaming bright, blending against the blood-darkened sunset.

Precision captivates the audience’s imagination.

Sometimes red is enough.

Does anyone know what carmine is, or claret, or carnelian, or vermilion, without researching it? Depends on your audience. Women are usually familiar with periwinkle, cerulean, chartreuse, coral, fuschia, or saffron. Typically men don’t care. Children will be confused by words that are rarely used: recondite, abstruse, esoteric shades and tinctures.

Sometimes ambience is enough.

Colors communicate moods, and there are a lot of ways to play around with images, to communicate patterns, intensities, motion, arrangements, gradients, transitions from one palette to another.

There is a choice between elegance, and simplicity.

Precision captures the aesthetic; precision sculpts an ordinary scene into a vivid panorama; precision elevates the narrative into a more beautiful illusion.

Green is adequate…

But perhaps the deep green of the forest nestles atop soft green hills, where columns of emerald-green soldiers march beneath a polluted, sickly-green sky clouded by olive fumes, and the grim, exhausted battalions are led by a solemn queen with long, blonde hair and pale green eyes speckled with gold. Behind her, there are hulking shadows lumbering in the distance, rusting titanium giants manufactured thousands of years ago by some long-forgotten factory, and their jade armor bristles with protruding javelins of cracked, fading artillery dyed in mottled, checkered squares of lime, avocado, seaweed, citron, cadmium, artichoke, and lemon-green.

Clearly this tends towards excess.

What matters is the vibe: Ambience, and passion.

Colors emphasize key details.

Complex, obscure words can be paired with universal terms: The pavilion was brown, a muted russet fringed by copper edges, and a caramel-brown roof.

The pairing immediately explains itself, by grouping an unfamiliar concept with a familiar equivalent which functions as a synonym. This is a good trick for exposition of all kinds: The robbers rushed into the bank, a warehouse of arbitrary tokens which functioned as symbols of personal time and labor compressed into paper or metal. The robbers lifted their rifles, decentralized equalizers of violence which had abolished feudal aristocracy in favor of the pretense of democratic representation, a moral illusion of widespread civic participation which created a furtive ecosystem of managerial caste signaling and bureaucratic conspiracies to trick ordinary citizens into submission without physical enforcement.

Exposition is always better to avoid, or minimize.

Even when the audience is not sure about the difference between umber or ochre, maroon or burgundy, the technical fidelity is less important than conveying emotion, and significance.

Stories disappoint us, more often than not. Novels with breathtaking covers, and movies promoted by hauntingly beautiful posters, rarely live up to what we imagine they can be. Or should be.

But there are rare, achingly-beautiful moments when we encounter something special, which exceeds expectations, shatters expectations of what entertainment can offer — I remember when I read ZeroHPLovecraft’s “The Gig Economy”, or MythPilot’s “Our Private Kingdom”.

I remember where I was… and a sense of amazement; the emergence of something lovely, surprising, and profoundly meaningful.

That vibe is the goal, the aspiration of any writer — to create something special. Then to do it again. And again. And again.

It’s never easy. But after a while, meaningful creation does become easier.

To get to that point requires a sharp, dangerous collection of tools in the author’s toolbox. Hammers and wrenches; pliers and screwdrivers; clamps and drills. The perfect arsenal of a builder… or serial killer.

Finding the right word is overrated. Authors neurotically torment themselves, searching for the perfect sentence, the perfect story — it doesn’t exist.

But what is indeed possible, very possible, is to entrance readers with a juggling, dancing, climbing, twirling circus of clowns and acrobats; lions and elephants; choirs and mutated freaks.

Lovely prose is one component of that machine.

And in that spirit, pursuant to that vision, I have collated this collection of colors and their usages, to demonstrate what subtle stratums and gradations are available to the discerning craftsman, painting vibrant dreams, summoning bleak, frigid nightmares.

But remember…

Sometimes red is enough.

Examples:

1.)

”I’m wrong to describe her hair as brown. It’s more like burnt wheat with copper and russet highlights. “This sport isn’t about proving anything. It’s very personal. People get killed. Very experienced people get seriously injured and killed. Why do you even want to do this?”

—Nic Pizzolatto, Between Here and the Yellow Sea: "Ghost Birds"

2.)

“One morning, however, he found himself in the ranks of his prepared regiment. The men were whispering speculations and recounting the old rumors. In the gloom before the break of the day their uniforms glowed a deep purple hue. From across the river the red eyes were still peering. In the eastern sky there was a yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun; and against it, black and patternlike, loomed the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse.”

—Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

3.)

“A remote light fell from above. I raised my confused eyes: in the vertiginous, extreme heights I saw a circle of sky so blue that it seemed purple.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal

4.)

“The rise they were ascending dropped away and a cliff face rose vertical ahead of them, looking like it was ten thousand metres tall. The milky-blue granite face was carved into steps like a ziggurat, a vast steepled formation of weather-worn storeys, rows of archways and slumped blocks.”

—Dan Abnett, First and Only

5.)

“Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

6.)

“Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above”

—Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Mermaid

7.)

“Some of this draws upon the opportunistic resentment of foreigners, yes, who sense in this time of weakness the chance to finally get revenge on the West for the shame of past defeats; but for every second-generation immigrant who adds their sadistic glee to the woke horde, I’ve met another who is indifferent to it all, and another still who regards this descent into madness with worried bafflement, the way you might look at a teenage girl who’s taken to cutting herself. The cultists seem to be mainly the lost children of the West – the soyboy, the AWFL, the bugman, the hicklib, the autogynophile trannissary ... all of them as white as factory-fresh oxycontin.”

—John Carter, Postcards from Barsoom: Determined to Die

Determined to Die - by John Carter - Postcards From Barsoom (substack.com)

8.)

“His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as summerwine. One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

9.)

“Butch tells the Sheriff he can put his two hundred dollars where the sun don’t shine, and Sheriff Sullivan, he tells Butch: ‘They got a lime pit down at the Shank, Butch, and they tell me after you’ve been workin there about two years, your tongue goes as green as a lime Popsicle. Now you pick. Two years peelin lime or two hundred dollars. What do you think?’

—Stephen King, IT

10.)

“There were women in his harem: concubines, from every land, infidel and faithful, with skins white as the desert sand; skins brown as the mountains seen at evening; skins yellow as smoke; skins black as obsidian:

All of them adept at the arts of pleasure.”

—Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Issue Fifty: “Distant Mirrors: Ramadan

11.)

“The wizard was a monster of a man, as tall as Victarion himself and twice as wide, with a belly like a boulder and a tangle of bone-white hair that grew about his face like a lion’s mane. His skin was black. Not the nut brown of the Summer Islanders on their swan ships, nor the red-brown of the Dothraki horselords, nor the charcoal-and-earth color of the dusky woman’s skin, but black. Blacker than coal, blacker than jet, blacker than a raven’s wing.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

12.)

“Immediately a thick coppery green chain appeared out of thin air, extending from the depths of the water into Dumbledore’s clenched hand. Dumbledore tapped the chain, which began to slide through his fist like a snake, coiling itself on the ground with a clinking sound that echoed noisily off the rocky walls, pulling something from the depths of the black water. Harry gasped as the ghostly prow of a tiny boat broke the surface, glowing as green as the chain, and floated, with barely a ripple, toward the place on the bank where Harry and Dumbledore stood.”

—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

13.)

‘It comes and goes,’ Billy says, thinking of his lawn in Midwood. It’s as green as the felt on a new pool table. Even the grass in front of 658 Pearson looks better, and the brick jaw of the train station across the street is hidden by high-sprouting weeds.

—Stephen King, Billy Summers

14.)

“He was happy, pleasantly excited over the prospect of spending the day shouting about the Yankees and the war, and proud of his three pretty daughters in their bright spreading hoop skirts beneath foolish little lace parasols. He gave no thought to his conversation of the day before with Scarlett, for it had completely slipped his mind. He only thought that she was pretty and a great credit to him and that, today, her eyes were as green as the hills of Ireland. The last thought made him think better of himself, for it had a certain poetic ring to it, and so he favored the girls with a loud and slightly off-key rendition of "The Wearin' o' the Green."”

—Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

15.)

“He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast’s empty eye sockets had watched him go.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

16.)

“Drogo’s braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of his thighs.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

17.)

“And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

18.)

“Not only had the entire scene doubled and, even more peculiarly, grown brighter, but as for the two overlapping images of the nugget itself, one was as gold as the other was silver, no doubt at all… At some point Merle was obliged to remove the wafer-thin rhomboid from Frank’s grasp.”

—Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

19.)

“My grandmother commented upon her fate as a lone Englishwoman exiled to that far corner of the earth; people told her that she was not the only one there and, months later, pointed out to her an Indian girl who was slowly crossing the plaza. She wore two brightly colored blankets and went barefoot; her hair was blond. A soldier told her another Englishwoman wanted to speak to her. The girl agreed; she entered the headquarters without fear but not without suspicion. In her copper-colored face, which was daubed in ferocious colors, her eyes were of that reluctant blue the English call gray. Her body was lithe, like a deer's; her hands, strong and bony. She came from the desert, from the hinterland, and everything seemed too small for her: doors, walls, furniture.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, Story of the Warrior and the Captive

20.)

‘This is a mortal insult!’ The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word. Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the Pan would at once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.”

—Fyodor Dosteoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

21.)

“To the left and right of the automobile the city disintegrated; the firmament grew and houses were of less importance than a brick kiln or a poplar tree. They arrived at their miserable destination: an alley's end, with rose-colored walls which somehow seemed to reflect the extravagant sunset.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, Death and the Compass

22.)

“The first murder occurred in the Hôtel du Nord — that tall prism which dominates the estuary whose waters are the color of the desert.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, Death and the Compass

23.)

“All that night I was unable to sleep, for something was struggling within my heart. I arose shortly before dawn; my slaves were sleeping, the moon was of the same color as the infinite sand.”

—Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal

24.)

“Light as red as blood comes through an open door, and it makes her scared for a moment. But as soon as she steps inside, she can see that it’s just the light of the sunset coming in through an open window.
Just! She’s only ever seen it once before, and this one’s better. The sky catches fire from the ground on up, and the flames go through every colour, cooling from red-orange to violet and blue at the zenith.
It blinds her, for at least ten or twenty seconds, to the fact that she’s not alone.”

—Mike R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

25.)

“In very hot climates, where the heat of the sun has great power, people are usually as brown as mahogany; and in the hottest countries they are negroes, with black skins. A learned man once travelled into one of these warm climates, from the cold regions of the north, and thought he would roam about as he did at home; but he soon had to change his opinion. He found that, like all sensible people, he must remain in the house during the whole day, with every window and door closed, so that it looked as if all in the house were asleep or absent.”

—Hans Christian Anderson, The Shadow

26.)

‘Wha-at? Isn’t every one here dining at his own expense? You would seem to be ...’ Ferfitchkin flew out at me, turning as red as a lobster, and looking me in the face with fury. ‘Tha-at,’ I answered, feeling I had gone too far, ‘and I imagine it would be better to talk of something more intelligent.’

—Fyodor Dosteoevsky, Notes from Underground

27.)

“As the plot unfolds, and the Great Dream Boxer sadly proves unable to win any form of wrestling match, he is sent to participate in a new form of martial arts competition where athletes compete for a championship in “the art of endurance.” It is a contest in which the advantage is held by the competitor who comes from the nation that can tolerate the most humiliation and pain. Indeed, China’s champion perseveres through a barrage of hardships and tortures, including a self-humiliation trial consisting of hitting one’s own face. Tang beats himself until he is “as purple as an eggplant,” and the swelling under his thick skin has made it “as thin and translucent as paper.” Yet, while the other competitors give up and fail, he revels in the pain. The athlete from China ends up prevailing literally by losing his face. Declared the undisputed world champion, he receives his award in an Olympic-style ceremony. The story ends with the raising of the Chinese flag and the playing of the national anthem, as all of China, tuned into a live broadcast of the ceremony, erupts in wild celebration.”

—Klaus Muhlhahn, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping

28.)

“Speck House was out in the country. It was rickety but big like a mansion with rooms everywhere, 3 stories. Maybe even 4. It look good outside but inside it was old and drafty and leaky and cold in wintertime. Cold as a whore’s fuck in a freezer, Ronnie used to say. But I didn’t know it was old when I got there, I thought it was new because rickety or not it had bright red paint and blue trim. I found out pretty soon that the Speck foster kids painted it every year and got $2 dollars an hour. One year it was green with white trim and then yellow with green trim. You can see why me and Ronnie called it the House of Everlasting Paint! The year I left to join the Marines it was back to red and blue. Ronnie said it’s only paint holding this rambling wreck together, Benjy. That was a joke, she was always joking around, but it was also true. I guess most jokes have some truth in them, and that is what makes them funny.”

—Stephen King, Billy Summers

29.)

“Imagine if you will, Your Grace, the vast Martian sky, as purple as a lilac, with the same sun that shines on Westminster and London here taking on a wholly foreign aspect, with wide tendrils of rainbow snaking from its centrally glowing orb. See, if you will, the vast ruins that had once been the pride of seven races with their crystal hearts laid bare by storms and war; the massive, dying river, slow as an old man’s blood; the bleeding and desperate crew hauling the hope of survival on a half-shattered cart that struggled and failed to rise from the ground like a wounded moth. The air was thin and held the scent of metal and spent gunpowder. The heat of the sun oppressed as powerfully as a tropical noontime. Now hear the familiar cry of Quohog — awch loy — smoke ahoy. Picture a storm of dragonflies, each as large as a man’s arm. They rose in the east, thick as the billows of a vast conflagration, and spread out across the sky. I heard Carina Meer’s cry when she caught sight of them and saw the blood drain from her tawny face.”

—James S. A. Corey, Old Mars (2013 anthology): A Man Without Honor

30.)

“Glancing down, he saw a little of the label, a teasing hint of brown and gold where the sheltering mound of sky-blue cloths had slid away. Metaxa three-star brandy. Full and unopened. On his own account he recoiled from it and from the poisoned release it represented. He piled the cloths on top of it again to hide it from sight.
But he kept going back to it. He’d been fretting all day about this journey. About going back to Beacon and the narrow, walled-in world he’d been so happy to leave behind. He’d been feeling like he was walking between the rock and the hard place. Maybe, he thought, desperate situations require desperate remedies.”

—Mike R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

31.)

Martin Amis, The Information:

“Gwyn Barry was nearing the climax of a combined interview and photo session. Richard entered the room and crossed it in a diagonal with one hand effacingly raised, and sat on a stool, and picked up a magazine. Gwyn was on the window seat, in his archaeologist’s suit, also with archaeologist’s aura of outdoor living, rugged inquiry, suntan. He filled his small lineaments neatly, just as his hair filled the lineaments (only a rumor, for now) of male-pattern recession. Gwyn’s hair was actually gray, but bright gray: not the English gray of eelskin and wet slates; nor yet the gray that comes about through tiredness of pigment, and dryness. Bright gray hair — the hair (Richard thought) of an obvious charlatan. Richard himself, by the way, was going bald too, but anarchically. No steady shrinkage, with the flesh stealing crownwards like rising water; with him, hair loss happened in spasms, in hanks and handfuls. Visits to the barber were now as fearful and apparently hopeless as visits to the bank manager, or the agent — or the garage, in the tomato-red Maestro.”

—Martin Amis, The Information

32.)

“Melanie stares at the clothes that Justineau holds out, without comment. Sombre and withdrawn as she is, it’s obvious that they still fascinate her. Pink jeans with a unicorn embroidered on the back pocket. A pastel blue T-shirt emblazoned with the motto BORN TO DANCE. An aviator jacket, also pink, with button-up flaps at the shoulders and lots and lots of pockets. White knickers and rainbow-striped socks. Trainers with jewel-spangled laces.”

—Mike R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts

33.)

“Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer.” His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. “Meanwhile,” said he, “I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It’s a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it’s half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I’ll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

34.)

“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

35.)

“Sophisticated movies demand sophisticated reactions from their audiences — that is, they demand that we react to them as adults. Horror movies are not sophisticated, and because they are not, they allow us to regain our childish perspective on death — perhaps not such a bad thing. I'll not descend to the romantic oversimplification that suggests we see things more clearly as children, but I will suggest that children see more intensely. The greens of lawns are, to the child's eye, the color of lost emeralds in H. Rider Haggard's conception of King Solomon's Mines, the blue of the winter sky is as sharp as an icepick, the white of new snow is a dream-blast of energy. And black… is blacker. Much blacker indeed. “

—Stephen King, Danse Macabre

36.)

Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston:

“Depending on the places we passed, the night around us shaded from ink black to red and purple to a washed-out yellow that hung like gauze in front of the dark, like you could see the dark sitting under the light, and then it would be back to ink black, and the air would change smells from sea salt to pine pulp to ammonia and burning oil. Trees and marshland crowded us and we passed over the Atchafalaya Basin, a long bridge suspended over a liquid murk, and I thought about the dense congestion of vines and forest when I was a kid, how the green and leafy things had seemed so full of shadows, and how it had felt like half the world was hidden in those shadows. Refinery towers burned in the night and their trail of bright gray smoke made me picture Loraine sitting on that beach in Galveston, with her head cradled on my chest, telling her about the cotton fields. I wondered what she would think about this.”

—Nic Pizzolatto, Galveston

37.)

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

“As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling.
An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent. Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

38.)

Neil Gaiman, Sandman Issue Twenty-One: “Season of Mists, a Prologue”:

“Let us pause for a moment, as they descend the grey steps toward Destiny’s banqueting hall, to consider the Endless.
Desire is of medium height. It is unlikely that any portrait will ever do Desire justice, since to see her (or him) is to love him (or her), — passionately, painfully, to the exclusion of all else.
Desire smells almost subliminally, of summer peaches, and casts two shadows: one black and sharp-edged, the other translucent and forever wavering, like heat haze.
Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And there is much else that is knife-like about Desire.
Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are.
Everything.”

—Neil Gaiman, Sandman Issue Twenty-One: “Season of Mists, a Prologue”

39.)

“Then he would tear up the driveway, the A’s rear wheels spitting back black dirt and gray clods of clay, both of them jouncing up and down on the sofa-seat inside the open cab, laughing like stark natural-born fools. Will would run the A through the high grass of the back field, which was kept for hay, toward either the south field (potatoes), the west field (corn and beans), or the east field (peas, squash, and pumpkins). As they went, birds would burst up out of the grass before the truck, squawking in terror. Once a partridge flew up, a magnificent bird as brown as late-autumn oaks, the explosive coughing whirr of its wings audible even over the pounding engine.”

—Stephen King, IT

40.)

“Wounded as he was, it was wonderful how fast he could move, his grizzled hair tumbling over his face, and his face itself as red as a red ensign with his haste and fury. I had no time to try my other pistol, nor indeed much inclination, for I was sure it would be useless. One thing I saw plainly: I must not simply retreat before him, or he would speedily hold me boxed into the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the bloodstained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity. I placed my palms against the main-mast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

41.)

“Galahad stepped aboard as usual, with his insufferable self-confidence. They followed him and found a rich bed with a crown of silk on it and a part-drawn sword. It was King David's sword. There were also three magic spindles, made out of the Eden tree, and two inferior swords for Percy and Bors. Naturally the main sword was for Galahad. The pommel was of marvellous stone, the scales of the haft were of the ribs of two beasts called Calidone and Ertanax, the scabbard was of serpent's skin, and one side of the sword was as red as blood. But the girdle was only plain hemp.”

—T. H. White, The Once and Future King

42.)

“Cressen no longer recalled the name the Asshai’i gave the leaf, or the Lysene poisoners the crystal. In the Citadel, it was simply called the strangler. Dissolved in wine, it would make the muscles of a man’s throat clench tighter than any fist, shutting off his windpipe. They said a victim’s face turned as purple as the little crystal seed from which his death was grown, but so too did a man choking on a morsel of food.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

43.)

George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings:

“Catelyn rose stiffly. Her knees ached, and she would have given much for a featherbed and a pillow just then. “Thank you, ser. I am ready.”
They rode in silence through sparse woodland where the trees leaned drunkenly away from the sea. The nervous whinny of horses and the clank of steel guided them back to Renly’s camp. The long ranks of man and horse were armored in darkness, as black as if the Smith had hammered night itself into steel. There were banners to her right, banners to her left, and rank on rank of banners before her, but in the predawn gloom, neither colors nor sigils could be discerned. A grey army, Catelyn thought. Grey men on grey horses beneath grey banners. As they sat their horses waiting, Renly’s shadow knights pointed their lances upward, so she rode through a forest of tall naked trees, bereft of leaves and life. Where Storm’s End stood was only a deeper darkness, a wall of black through which no stars could shine, but she could see torches moving across the fields where Lord Stannis had made his camp.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

44.)

“Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw was stone and trees, the looming mass of the great mountain shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then she noticed the glow of distant fires well above them; a tower keep, built upon the steep side of the mountain, its lights like orange eyes staring down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant, and still higher a third, no more than a flickering spark in the sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in the moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the pale towers, so far above.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

45.)

“They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy. Moonlight painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests drifted among them. Many were Dothraki horselords, big men with red-brown skin, their drooping mustachios bound in metal rings, their black hair oiled and braided and hung with bells. Yet among them moved bravos and sellswords from Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh, a red priest even fatter than Illyrio, hairy men from the Port of Ibben, and lords from the Summer Isles with skin as black as ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in wonder… and realized, with a sudden start of fear, that she was the only woman there.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

46.)

George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones:

“Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce … and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. “What are they?” she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.
“Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.”
“I shall treasure them always.” Dany had heard tales of such eggs, but she had never seen one, nor thought to see one. It was a truly magnificent gift, though she knew that Illyrio could afford to be lavish. He had collected a fortune in horses and slaves for his part in selling her to Khal Drogo.”

—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones