"She reaches back into history to carve an identity that represents all her facets, strong and black and resilient."
—Sharon Malinowski, Gay and Lesbian Literature (1994)

There is still only one miracle, only one: the Taj Mahal. . . . [It] has the fascination not of a work of art but of a natural and eternal beauty like the sea, the sky, like the highest, most immaculate mountain peaks. It had the color of the granular ice on certain glaciers today as I contemplated it for the last time. Then, as evening approached, it changed to pink and azure, to green, to the ardent violet of steel just before it is tempred. And the bronze- green cypresses, the cobalt sky, and the enclosed waters that repeated the miracle — it is all imprinted inside my eyelids, as when one looks at something blindingly bright.
—Guido Gozzano (1883—1916), Journey Toward the Cradle of Mankind, translated by David Marinelli, 1996.

Indigo.
Indigoing.
Indigone.
—Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume, 1984.

Three green chameleons race one another across the terrace; one pauses at Madame’s feet, flicking its forked tongue, and she comments: ‘Chameleons. Such exceptional creatures. The way they change color. Red. Yellow. Lime. Pink. Lavender. And did you know they are very fond of music?’ She regards me with her fine black eyes. ‘You don’t believe me?’
—Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons, 1980.

Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before. Took her a long time to finish with blue, then yellow, then green. She was well into pink when she died.
—Toni Morrison, Sethe pondering her mother’s last days in Beloved, 1987.

Who saw the first / green light of the sun? / I, said the night owl, / The only one.

Who saw the moss / creep over the stone? / I, said the grey fox, / All alone.
—Margaret Wise Brown, "The Secret Song," from the collection Piping Down The Valleys Wild: A merry mix of verse for all ages, edited by Nancy Larrick, 1968.

What I have to do is get in my bed and lay down. I want to fix on something harmless in this world.”

“What world you talking about? Ain’t nothing harmless down here.”

“Yes it is. Blue. That don’t hurt nobody. Yellow neither.”

“You getting in the bed to think about yellow?”

“I likes yellow.”

“Then what? When you get through with blue and yellow, then what?”

“Can’t say. It’s something can’t be planned.”
—Toni Morrison, Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid conversing in Beloved, 1987.

The sky had no colour, the earth was coloured only with dim toneless colour, swimming and indistinct. Then she looked up and saw that the Himalayas were showing in their full range, and were coloured in ash and orange and precious Chinese pink, deeper in the east, paler in the west.

The people called it ‘the flowering of the snows’; and she thought that it was true: the mountain looked as if it flowered, stained with brilliant flowery pink; the spring of pink, of hill crocuses and almond trees and girlish cotton clothes. It seemed to come nearer, to spill across the valley and the terrace, to her feet.

It was light.
—Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus, 1939.

O the month of May, the merry month of May, / So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green; / O and then did I unto my true love say, / Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer's queen.
—Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday, first performed at the Rose Theatre, London, in 1599. Edited by Anthony Parr, 1975.

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover / Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast. / Under the purple thyme and the purple clover / Sleeping at last.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti, "Sleeping at Last," 1896.

A palette nowadays is absolutely colorful: sky- blue, pink, orange, vermillion, strong yellow, clear green, pure wine red, purple. But by strengthening all colors one again obtains calm and harmony; there happens something similar to Wagner’s music which, even though performed by a great orchestra, is nonetheless intimate.
—Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his sister, as quoted in Post-Impressionism from van Gogh to Gauguin by John Rewald, 1958.

At the bottom of the hill, the woods opened suddenly onto a pasture dotted here and there with black and white cows and sloping down, tier after tier, to a broad orange stream where the reflection of the sun was set like a diamond.
—Flannery O’Connor, The River, A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories, 1955.

"She felt deflated, like a balloon that's unexpectedly burst."
—Prudence Martin, Heart's Shadow

Years pass by and leave things unaltered. The same narrow, red roads run through cotton- and cornfields. The same time- grayed cabins send up threads of smoke from their red- clay chimneys, doorways, and china- berry and crape- myrtle blossoms to drop gay petals on little half- clothed black children.
—Julia Peterkin (1880–1961), “Ashes,” from Green Thursday: Stories by Julia Peterkin, first published in 1924.

Her face lit up like a rainbow.

May all our days and desires
become pure colorful rain-
drops of Mercy.
—Geoffrey Oelsner, Native Joy: Poems Songs Visions Dreams 1963-2003

"The magic of any gem is dependent upon the magic of the light that gives it life and fire.  Gems are complex things and handle light in complex ways.  Light doesn’t just uneventfully flow through windows as it does through glass, or simple bounce back as from a black-hearted mirror.  Instead it dances impatiently, refracts and reflects.  It comes alive along with the gem.  In a weird way, a gem is a crystal cage that traps the light and makes it fight to escape."

—Diane Morgan, Fire and Blood; Rubies in Myth, Magic, and History, 2008

One weekend Trout and Eel decided to paint their bedroom blue. The walls were the turquoise of the southern seas, the ceiling was cobalt, the floors indigo, the color of waters so deep and distant, no human had ever seen them before. Here in this room anyone could imagine the sound of waves breaking.
—Alice Hoffman, Indigo, 2002.

They live ’neath the curtain / Of fir woods and heather, / And never take hurt in / The wildest of weather, / But best they love Autumn — she’s brown as themselves — / And they are the brownest of all the brown elves.
—Patrick Chalmers, from "The Puk-Wudjies", a poem published in Punch in 1910.

Grandson of a millionaire, [Cole] Porter spent his entire life surrounded by opulence, and his home at 13 re Monsieur was no exception. In the entryway, black- and- white checked tile led from the front door to a finely cut marble staircase flanked on each side by columns. From the top of the stairs, a grand salon stretched out over much of the first floor, enclosing in its white paneling soft velvet couches, oriental- finished tables, and colorful rugs. Platinum paper coated the library walls, while elsewhere in the house zebra- skin rugs complemented ornate art deco furnishing. . . . Porter’s workroom . . . , painted entirely in white, contained nothing but a white table, a white piano, and one hundred white pencils. The wall facing the courtyard was made of frosted glass with a small, clear porthole so that Porter could gaze outside for inspiration.
—Luke Miner, Paris Jazz: A Guide, 2005.