Pale Quotes

A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy's body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid, red hives, bloody scratches. His bloodshot eyes bulged, darting back and forth. ~ James Dashner

In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her. ~ Catherynne M Valente

...Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there... has the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese. ~ Neil Gaiman

Your grandma is a magician. Remember that time when you fell off your bicycle and she lifted you up onto the kitchen counter? She cleaned your bloody knees, washed the tears and snot off your face, told you funny stories and tickled your stomach until you giggled so hard it made you hiccup. The tears, the blood, the pain, your mum's closed bedroom door - all vanished, as if your grandma had waved a wand - sim sala bim! Hard to keep your smile off your face now, no? She did such things. Still does. A trickster, she is. Always full of pranks and laughter. Like now, looking so wrinkled and pale in her bed, not responding. Bet she opens her eyes any moment now with that mischievous grin of hers, pleased she fooled you. You'll both double over in laughing fits. Any moment now.
From: "Grandma's Tricks", In-flight literary magazine issue 4 2015 ~ Margrét Helgadóttir

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; -
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air -
Comes a still voice -
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine etern ~ William Cullen Bryant

There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre. ~ Propertius

Hey, suit guy! The man bellowed.
Chris bit back the urge to yell. He turned, expecting to be confronted by a hand held out for money. What he saw was a pair of enormous eyes, the same color as the spring sky, set in a face with high cheekbones and a delicate chiseled jaw. The man's short, spiked hair was dyed a vibrant purple, making his creamy pale skin glow. Letting his gaze shift downward in a sudden still silence, Chris took in the sleek, sculpted muscles under the snug green t-shirt, the faded jeans molded to slim hips and thighs.
He'd never in his life's seen anyone so beautiful. ~ Ally Blue

The fact is that I find in the day's light, in this diffused, pale, almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night's. ~ Italo Calvino

Long I have known and feared this day would come. Like the circle of Earth, the circle of life is changing. Here in the north, there are those who can still feel, see, and smell the changes wrought in and around Earth by Money Chiefs. The air is no longer clean, winter grows warmer, rivers flood without a sign, and the soil, once dark and rich, lies pale and weak. Bears, wolves, and other forest Spirits will soon go the way of the buffalo, for their food dwindles like birds that once ruled the skies. ~ Frederic M. Perrin

The past never leaves you. You carry it around with you for as long as you live, like a pale, stubborn worm lodged there in your gut, keeping you up at night. ~ George Bishop

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons. ~ George R R Martin

He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was a horrible aristocracy, apparently, for those who had no capacity for love (or rather for suffering in love) could not be said to be alive and certainly would not live again after their death. They were a kind of straw population, filling the world with their meaningless laughter and tears and chatter and disappearing still lovable and vain into thin air. For this distinction he cultivated his own definition of love that was like no other and that had gathered all its bitterness and pride from his odd life. He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living. There was (he believed) a great repertory of errors mercifully impossible to human beings who had recovered from this illness. Unfortunately there remained to them a host of failings, but at least (from among many illustrations) they never mistook a protracted amiability for the whole conduct of life, they never again regarded any human being, from a prince to a servant, as a mechanical object. ~ Thornton Wilder

What looks to be a wisp of cloud is actually the moon, narrow and pale like a paring snipped from a snowman's toenail. ~ Tom Robbins

He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky. ~ Louisa May Alcott

You don't really mean that about having everyone leave you alone," she said sweetly. "You seem like such a friendly and outgoing guy. I'll make sure to mention how great you are to everyone over the next couple of days. Before you know it, the whole street will be knocking on your door and introducing themselves. It won't be a month before you're hosting the neighborhood barbecue. You'll also be picking up prescriptions, mowing lawns and eating macaroni salad with every meal so you won't hurt their feelings." She batted her eyelashes at him as he seemed to pale before her eyes. "Welcome to the neighborhood. ~ Liliana Hart

The gallery was a neat, pale square of white paint and glossy windows among the colorful shops of the street. The glare of the sun kept her from seeing anything of the art on display behind the glass, but the work listed on the website was nicely curated. A couple of local artists mixed in with more expensive pieces. ~ Victoria Helen Stone

I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared. ~ Charles Dickens

She slipped both hands into the water. Her skin looked pale and creamy below its surface. Not its usual warm bronze color. She fixed her gaze on the place where the water met the air, on the strange bend that made it seem as though her hands were in a different world beneath the water -
A world that moved more slowly and told stories.
The water lies. ~ Renee Ahdieh

SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY
Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky.
Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries.
Just think
all the celestial lights are present at the same time!
These are moments of wonder
see them and remember. ~ Vera Nazarian

There was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. ~ George Eliot

I was blessed with suck in the form of the traditional Snow White coloring: skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as coal. In the cartoons and the storybooks, they make it look almost cute. Of course, when artists and animators design a Snow White, they essentially give their incarnation of my story a spray tan and some neutral lip liner. A true seven-oh-nine was nowhere near as marketable as those animated darlings. We're too pale, and our lips are too red, and we look like something out of a horror movie that didn't have the decency to stay on the screen. ~ Seanan McGuire

She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, - the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man - perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! ... ~ Charlotte Bronte

Her skin is pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices. ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

He'd been an odd one, that boy with the camera. Such a distinctive physique: pale skin so taut on his skeleton, holding himself with a shy hunch, not ugly as such but certainly not handsome, with a demeanor eager to cause no trouble, to attract no attention. ~ Ali Shaw

He was part of the night, the creatures known to him, the restless, untamed land matching his hungry soul. Beau watched him,observing the utter stillness marking the dangerous predator, the merciless eyes moving constantly,missing nothing.The powerful, well-muscled body was deceptively relaxed but ready for anything. The face,harshy sensual, beautifully cruel, was etched with hardship and knowledge,rish and peril. Gregori stayed in the shadows,but the silver menace of his gaze glowed with a strange iridescent light in the dark of the night.
Beau took the opportunity to study Savannah. She was everything up close that she had been on the stage, even more. Ethereal, mysterious, sexy. They very stuff of men's fantasies. Her face was flawless, lit up with joy, her eyes clear,like beautiful blue star sapphires. Her laughter was musical and infectious. She was small and innocent beside the predator in his boat. She would touch Gregori's arm, point to something on the embankment, her body brushing his lightly,and each time it happened,those pale eyes would warm to molten mercury and caress fer face intimately,hungrily. ~ Christine Feehan

And were the vision of Democritus to have been adopted by Western civilization, instead of being cast aside for the pale views of Plato and Aristotle, we would be vastly further ahead today, in ~ Carl Sagan

Each of us from the seance stood alone. Like so many pillars of salt, we had tried to look back and failed. And in the eyes of the others who shared the pale, flat sky with us, there was sometimes suspicion, sometimes a little fear. ~ Joan Lowery Nixon

In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous parts of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world. Primitive man once experienced the rich and sparkling flood of the senses fully. Children experience it for a few months-until "normal" training, conditioning, close the doors on this other world, usually for good. Somehow, the drugs opened these ancient doors. And through them modern man may at last go, and rediscover his divine birthright ... ~ Tom Wolfe

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance. ~ Ogden Nash

The girl remains on the ground. He looks at her and she looks at him and the air feels at once static and loaded, as if there is some kind of undersound his ear can't quite decipher. Like after a bell rings. That's how it is between them. There is something celestial about her, her skin a pale color, but a paleness of the softest gray-white imaginable, as if she had been soaking for years in a bath of moonlight. ~ Benjamin Percy

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.

The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured mar ~ William Golding

And just what is Antoine Roquentin? An abstraction. A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness. Antoine Roquentin . . . and suddenly the "I" pales, pales, and fades out. Lucid, ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding."
"To save your reputation?"
Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me. ~ Lisa Kleypas

There is an instinct for realism, a powerful drive to reproduce oneself. The fascination of photorealistic paintings lies partly in their apparent replication of life, but these are not merely replications. These paintings are often out of life scale, varying from over life-size to under life-size, from brilliant, heightened color to pale, undertone hues. ~ Audrey Flack

The night draws to an end, the dream dims in the pale silver of awakening. Kruppe ceases, weary beyond reason. Sweat drips down the length of his ratty beard, his latest affectation.
A bard sits, head bowed, and in a short time he will say thank you. But for now he must remain silent, and as for the other things he would say, they are between him and Kruppe and none other. Fisher sits, head bowed. While an Elder God weeps.
The tale is spun. Spun out.
Dance by limb, dance by word. Witness! ~ Steven Erikson

Staring at Joey's eyes blinking up from his pale face was a bit like inhaling a pound of rock candy while watching puppies play. ~ K.A. Mitchell

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight. ~ Linda Ronstadt

He was looking up at the sky, where a pale crescent of moon darted in between thick sweeps of cloud and fog. Flakes of white snow had fallen and mixed with his black hair. His cheeks and lips were flushed with the cold. He looked more handsome than she had ever remembered him. ~ Cassandra Clare

What I want to know is whether or not I can expect a repetition of it, if I were to agree with what Alexandra wants."
Drowning in angry mortification, Elizabeth nevertheless managed not to flinch or drop her gaze, and although her voice shook slightly, she managed to say calmly and clearly, "I have no control over wagging tongues, your grace. If I had, I would not have been the topic of scandal two years ago. However, I have no desire whatever to reenter your society. I still have scars enough from my last sortie among the Quality." Having deliberately injected a liberal amount of derision into the word "Quality," Elizabeth closed her mouth and braced herself to be verbally filleted by the old woman whose white brows had snapped together over the bridge of her thin nose. An instant later, however, the pale hazel eyes registered something that might have been approval, then they shifted to Alexandra. With a curt nod the dowager said, "I quite agree, Alexandra. She has spirit enough to endure what they will put her through. Amazing, is it not," continued the dowager to Elizabeth with a gruff smile, "that on the one hand we of the ton pride ourselves on our civilized manners, and yet many of us will dine on one another's reputations in preference to the most sumptuous meal." Leaving Elizabeth to sink slowly and dazedly into a chair she'd shot out of but moments before, the dowager then walked over to the sofa and seated herself, her eyes narrowed in thought. "The Willington ~ Judith McNaught

What you think of as they past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace
and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart? ~ Sylvia Plath

I don't understand how the pain of losing him can be a pale shadow in comparison to the pain of finding him again. ~ Amy Engel

She was setting out china cups in their saucers, her long pale hands almost the same color as the cream china. "How do you take yours?"
"Four creams, two sugars," Riley said, still mesmerized by her.
She stopped with a small waxed carton in her hand.
"Really?"
"He's very young," Gabe said. "I take mine black."
"He's very boring," Riley said. "Is that real cream? ~ Jennifer Crusie

Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood.
I'm coming, says Jude.
And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.
What color? I say
Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy.
Very nice.
You remembered, she says.
Jude comes in colors. How could I forget. Trembling blond orgasms that seem to piss her off and rare pink orgasms that never end. Chemical red orgasms that fill her with guilt and perfect orgasms black as fresh earth. Orgasms shadowy and gray that may or may not cause her to weep and orgasms the color of bruised skin, orgasms that fade from purple to yellow and remain visible for days. ~ Will Christopher Baer

I found it possible to observe at least the superficial capillaries of muscles both in the frog and in mammals through a binocular microscope, using strong reflected light as a source of illumination. Resting muscles observed in this way are usually quite pale, and the microscope reveals only a few capillaries at fairly regular intervals. ~ August Krogh

The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. ~ Karen Blixen

His touch seared all the way through to my bones. Each touch after would pale in comparison. For the rest of my life. ~ Missy Anne

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own. ~ Berenice Abbott

DAISIES

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't
mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example -- I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch --
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field. ~ Mary Oliver

Here on the island I find I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon, or the whorls in a small white shell, or the dark scar left in a dazzling night sky by a shooting star. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. ~ John Steinbeck

Logan glanced at the clock on the cooker: nearly five minutes fast. The room was bathed in the pale orange glow of the overcast sky, the back garden a jungle of silhouettes and shadows through the window. He filled the kettle, then poured half of it out, before sticking it on to boil. The growing rumble drowned out the babble on his Airwave handset as DI Bell got his firearms team into place. ~ Stuart MacBride

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. ~ John Steinbeck

Look,Freddy Krueger, if I thought there was a chance in a gazillion that Alex would even feature you in a nightmare, I might not be saying this so nicely. But I feel sorry for you, so I'm going to give you a tip." The p was sharp,harsh. She leaned in,close enough that I could see the pale,shimmery lipstick caked in the corners of her mouth. "This thing you have for him just makes you look like the world's most pitiful loser. Did you really think you had even the smallest chance with him? Did you?"
I didn't answer.Maybe a no would have satisfied her. Maybe not.
"You are a skank and a freak," she snapped, the hard sounds making me flinch. "You don't belong here. Go back to your greaseball 'hood. The sight of you makes me sick!"
Any girl who has ever been face-to-face with another angry girl, especially one with infinitely more spite and social standing knows to run.It's innate, from bunnies to baboons. Don't mess with the alpha female. She'll tear your throat out. So I ran,but not before I got a glimpse of Anna's face.
In the second before she turned away, she looked like someone had slapped her. Funny, seeing that didn't make me feel any better. ~ Melissa Jensen

I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they won't. ~ Margaret Atwood

He realizes finally that the boy he's been watching snap his board into the air, then neatly touch down- long, black, gleaming hair, pale white skin- is Felice. He didn't know she'd learned how to skateboard. He's never seen her like this before- so intently focused and content- her beauty beside the point, merely part of the catalog of effects- speed, balance, daring. He admires her athletic form and feels moved in some unexpected way. ~ Diana Abu-Jaber

There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither, on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor's Show. He also informed me that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by the - to me - extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however, that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion, which was pale or mealy. Mealy's father was a waterman, who had the additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy's - I think his little sister - did Imps in the Pantomimes. ~ Charles Dickens

Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse. ~ Dee Remy

Her room was darkened with the curtains drawn, but he could sense her inside, moving around quietly. Her heartbeat had turned languid; she must be preparing for bed. He cocked his head, listening intently. The closet door opened and shut, and there was the sound of running water. He held the goblet with such tense care his fingers began to ache.
When she had turned the faucet off, he said telepathically, "Tess, come to your window."
Startled, frozen silence. Then the languid pace of her heart exploded into a furious rhythm.
For a moment, when she didn't move, he thought she might disobey and end their tenuous relationship. Then he heard the soft rustle of cloth, and the creak of floorboards. When she appeared in the darkened window, she looked shadowy, like the half-hidden, opaque moon, her skin pale like pearls and hair lustrous with darkness.
She looked down at him but said nothing.
He held the goblet up to show it to her. "Are you sure you want to give this to me?"
Because it mattered. It mattered what she said. While the struggle made the offering sweet, it was the act of the gift itself that was the vital part of the covenant.
She didn't respond for long moments. He stood motionless as he waited, until finally she moved to put her hand to the windowpane.
"Yes."
He inclined his head to her, brought the goblet to his lips and drank.
Pure, undiluted power slid down his throat. Like the delicate skin at her wrist, it was warm ~ Thea Harrison

Oh, the envelope did contain magic," a strange, low voice said from the doorway.
Judith looked over. She forgot her cut and her coffee. And how to breathe.
The tall, broad man filling up the door frame looked like a warrior angel with gold hair falling into his eyes, a pale-gold undertone to his skin, and 'heartbreaking' green eyes….
"Any magic that involves blood is a grave threat," he continued. "And death by paper cut would be a long and tedious way to go. I can help. ~ Erin Kellison

That was the next-to-last time I felt any desire. And he was pale and tall (how disgusting tall men are, such a waste of space and flesh, so uncompact). (I am hideous myself now. Discovered in new, M.C., mirror that skin is a jungle of pearly stretch marks all over. Face sags too. Always new awful discoveries. If could only vomit up age like the food I relentlessly wolf.) ~ Maryse Holder

Winter was come indeed bringing with it those pleasures of which the summer dreamer knows nothing - the delight when the fine and glittering day shows in the window, though one knows how cold it is outside; the delight of getting as close as possible to the blazing range which in the shadowy kitchen throws reflections very different from the pale gleams of sunlight in the yard, the range we cannot take with us on our walk, busy with its own activity, growling and grumbling as it sets to work, for in three hours time luncheon must be ready; the delight of filling one's bowl with steaming café-au-lait - for it is only eight o'clock - and swallowing it in boiling gulps while servants at their tasks come in and out with a, 'Good morning: up early, aren't you?' and a kindly, 'It's snug enough in here, but cold outside,' accompanying the words with that smile which is to be seen only on the faces of those who for the moment are thinking of others and not of themselves, whose expressions, entirely freed from egotism, take on a quality of vacillating goodness, a smile which completes that earlier smile of the bright golden sky touching the window-panes, and crowns our every pleasure as we stand there with the lovely heat of the range at our backs, the hot and limpid flavour of the café-au-lait in our mouths; the delight of night-time when, having had to get up to go shiveringly to the icy lavatory in the tower, into which the air creeps through the ill-fitting window, we later return ~ Marcel Proust

This was the only door she ever opened, the door into herself. And her taciturnity was such that in a mirror, where every woman smiles at her reflection, she struck at herself over and over again, hammering her own effigy at her dumb forge. No flame, no air. Clad in red velvet, adorned in white, in black or pearl, her face heavily made up beneath the large pale forehead. In the heart of her room, encircled by candelabras, nothing but herself; a self always unseizable, and whose many faces she was forever unable to assemble in a single look. ~ Valentine Penrose

My dear Lord,' I said, but not to him. I spoke to Arthur. And I watched and wept, my arm around Ceinwyn, as the pale boat was swallowed by the shimmering silver mist. And so my Lord was gone. And no one has seen him since. ~ Bernard Cornwell

There are a lot of problems in the world, a lot of tragic things that have to be addressed, economic, medical, political, all kinds of things, but, to my way of thinking, they pale in comparison to the overall problem of the environmental deadline. ~ Dean Stockwell

The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater - a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in. ~ Olivia Howard Dunbar

Werner sleeps in a tiny dormitory with seven other fourteen-year-olds. The bunk above belongs to Frederick: a reedy boy, thin as a blade of grass, skin as pale as cream. Frederick is new too. He's from Berlin. His father is assistant to an ambassador. When Frederick speaks, his attention floats up, as though he's scanning the sky for something. ~ Anthony Doerr

As desire recedes, the world becomes clear, pale, and empty. ~ Mason Cooley

Take it easy, I carefully suggested to a pale Jo. She was chugging a glass of Champagne so quickly I half expected the bubble to shoot right down to her arse and release tiny Champagne sparkle farts. ~ Becca Lee

The mental powers acquire their full robustness when the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step; and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into the silent night. ~ Thomas Guthrie

Before that first line of pale chalk, before the underdrawing fleshes out into shapes and proportions, there is a stab of grief for all the things she didn't get to paint. The finches wheeling in the rafters of the barn, Cornelis reading in the arbor, Tomas bent over in his roses in the flower garden, apple blossoms, walnuts beside oysters, Kathrijn in the full bloom of her short life, Barent sleeping in a field of lilacs, the Gypsies in the market, late-night revelers in the taverns…. Every work is a depiction and a lie. We rearrange the living, exaggerate the light, intimate dusk when it's really noonday sun. ~ Dominic Smith

It was impossible to believe that Alan was lying in that pale, plain pine box merely from having caught a summertime disease. That box from which you cannot force your way out. That box in which a twelve-year-old was twelve years old forever. The rest of us live and grow older by the day, but he remains twelve. Millions of years go by, and he is still twelve. ~ Philip Roth

I've seen marvelous things, Sunday. I've looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don't go home? What if I just keep traveling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory. ~ Alastair Reynolds

Brioches are a light, pale yellow, faintly sweet kind of muffin with a characteristic blob on top, rather like a mushroom just pushing crookedly through the ground. Once eaten in Paris, they never taste as good anywhere else. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

Even if he hadn't spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students - the young men in brilliantly colored, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colors of peony blossoms and sherbet. ~ Mary Doria Russell

I'll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment. ~ Mark Lawrence

They were ghosts, I suppose, the procession of the dead. They weren't pale kings and pale maidens, they were work-worn men and women - perfectly ordinary people, except for being dead. You'd never mistake them for living people. You couldn't quite see through them, but they were even more drained of colour than everything else, and they weren't quite as solid as they ought to be. One of the men I recognised. He had been sitting in Fedw Hir near Grampar making blubbing sounds with his mouth. Now he strode along easily with a spring in his step. His face was grave and composed, he was a man with dignity and purpose. He bent and picked up one of my oak leaves from the path and offered it like a ticket at the cinema as he passed between the two trees. I didn't see anyone take it. I couldn't see into the darkness at all. ~ Jo Walton

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light. ~ Freya Stark

In a shuddering voice her father kept asking the pale-faced woman - who looked like her mother and wore her mother's apron but couldn't be her mother - for forgiveness. If she had been dying every minute of every day, they might have been a happy family. The blood consumed every centimeter of apron cloth and Havaa was afraid the wound would become hers if she came too close. Her mother stirred, looked to her father, and wrapped her five fingers over his none. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head, told her to save her breath, and Havaa would always remember how he had shushed what might have been her good-bye so that she could breathe. ~ Anthony Marra

You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time
though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them ~ Gene Wolfe

Pale as a candle flame in the dusk, tallow-pale, he stalked along, holding her hand, and Louie looked up and beyond him at the enfeebled stars. Thus, for many years, she had seen her father's head, a ghostly earth flame against the heavens, from her little height. Sam looked down on the moon of her face; the dayshine was enough still to light the eyeballs swimming up to him. ~ Christina Stead

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has brought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered ~ Patricia Highsmith

The future of English fiction may rest with this Unknown Public - a reading public of three millions which lies right out of the pale of true literary civilization - which is now waiting to be taught the difference between a good book and a bad. ~ Wilkie Collins

Thought I saw you on the beach this morning...Thought I saw you standing on the white strand, your back to the wind. The rain had stopped and there was a brisk clarity in the air. You watched me over your left shoulder, head tucked in coyly. Seabirds flying low in the sky, and the grey-green waves at your foot. A whole panorama thrown up behind you.

I was on the coast road coming back from the shops. I stopped walking once I caught sight of you. You were wearing a reefer jacket with the collar turned up against the weather. It might have been navy, but it looked black in the distance. As did your trousers. As did your shoes. All of you was black except your face and hair. You wore no hat...Never once saw you in Winter clothes, yet there you were as clear as day for a whole moment. Only your eyes were visible above the upturned collar. Your hair was in your eyes. You watched me through those pale strands. And I watched you. Intently.

The man from down the road drove by in his faded red car. He was going the other way, so he didn't offer a lift. He just waved. I waved back. And then I turned to you again, and we looked at each other a little longer. Very calm. Heart barely shifted. Too far away to see your features. No matter. There was salt on your face. Sea salt. It was in your hair. It was on your mouth. It was all over you, as though you gazed at me through ice. And it was all over me. It tingled on my skin.

After a time I moved off, and you ~ Claire Kilroy

That's him!" he said. "That's the one!"
"Is it, indeed?" Inspector Hewitt asked, as he lifted the cap from my head and took the gown from my shoulders with the gentle deference of a valet.
The little man's pale blue eyes bulged visibly in their sockets.
"Why, it's only a girl!" he said.
I could have slapped his face. ~ Alan Bradley

We are the women of daylight; of clocks and steel foundries, of drugstores and streetlights, of superhighways that slice our days in two. Our dreams are pale memories of themselves, and nagging doubt is the false measure of our days. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

What I fear and desire most in this world is passion. I fear it because it promises to be spontaneous, out of my control, unnamed, beyond my reasonable self. I desire it because passion has color, like the landscape before me. It is not pale. It is not neutral. It reveals the backside of the heart. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

A vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath. ~ Kim Edwards

A pale ring of sunlight burns into the clouds like the end of a lit cigarette. ~ Veronica Roth

Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses;
And being set, I 'll smother thee with kisses;
And yet not cloy thy lips with loath'd satiety,
But rather famish them amid their plenty,
Making them red and pale with fresh variety

Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty:
A summer's day will seem an hour but short,
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport. ~ William Shakespeare

I have seen statues that would look stodgy beside her, I have seen painted Madonnas whose features would be coarse beside her pale luminous loveliness. ~ Philippa Gregory

Hermione slid out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker towards Ron, her eyes upon his pale face. She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak, hopeful smile and half-raised his arms.
Hermione launched herself forwards and started punching every inch of him that she could reach.
'Ouch - ow - gerroff! What the - ? Hermione - OW!'
"You - complete - arse - Ronald - Weasley!"
She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as Hermione advanced.
"You - crawl - back - here - after - weeks - and - weeks - oh, where's my wand?"
She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry's hands and he reacted instinctively.
"Protego! ~ J.K. Rowling

The photograph showed a young couple smiling at the camera. The man didn't look much older than seventeen or eighteen, with light-coloured hair and delicate, aristocratic features. The woman may have been a bit younger, one or two years at the most. She had pale skin and a finely chiselled face framed by
short black hair. She looked drunk with happiness. The man had his arm round her waist, and she seemed to be whispering something to him in a teasing way. The image conveyed a warmth that drew a smile from me, as if I had recognized two old friends in those strangers. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

What is history if not one endless assault on love? ~ Casper Silk

Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life! ~ Malcolm Lowry

A pair of schoolchildren,pale as rice and loud as peacocks,cut over the road and hurtled down a side street,galloping with joy or else with terror (p. 55). ~ Monica Ali

They were standing in a very large room. The floorboards stretched in a pale expanse at their feet. There was so much dust on the floor that it had a pearly sheen.
"Even you could not nap on this floor," Kami told Angela.
"I don't know, a dust mattress might be very comfortable," said Angela. "Also possibly orthopedic. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

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