Shades Of Blue Quotes

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before - I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.
I've felt angry and sentimental.
I've loved. I've been loved back.
Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?
I'm a little exhausted. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

We long to find someone who has been where we've been, who shares our fragile places, who sees our sunsets with the same shades of blue. Soul mates. They somehow validate the depth of our experiences. ~ Beth Moore

What it like to sail?" she asked.
His gaze shifted, and he stared into the distance. "It's freedom. Like riding a powerful horse with a gait like silk. You speed over the waves, carried on the wind, held up over an unknowable depth of water beneath you, with the entire sky above. And that sky is a different color depending on where on earth you are. There are a thousand shades of blue. You can look up and know where you are, just by the color. And the stars at night - there's indescribable beauty in the stars, like a woman's eyes, flashing, shining... And yet, they are tools, enabling navigation, a map to follow..."
She stared at his profile as he spoke, at the scars that marred his brow and cheeks, the crooked line of his broken nose, the elegant, aristocratic line of his jaw, half-hidden under the shadow of stubble, and the soft, sensual curve of his mouth. She saw the sea in his eyes, smelled the wind, tasted the salt, and she felt her chest tighten with a longing to sail, to experience speed and adventure. Breathless, she felt the presence of the man in the portrait, the rogue, the bold captain. Her heart twisted as she imagined him in prison, beaten, chained, tormented to madness. He was still a prisoner, trapped inside the cage of his injured flesh, his damaged bones, his memories of unspeakable horrors.
What would it take to set him free? ~ Lecia Cornwall

I wanted to live in a house with walls painted in various shades of blue and green, instead of the eggshell hue that screamed renter. ~ Tayari Jones

Brighter shades of blue and red than he had ever seen. The ~ Brandon Mull

It was amazing how many colors there were, all running into the gutter in a stream: a dozen shades of blue, twenty different reds, and all that black soot, like a nightmare given form, the insides of a heart, destroyed so easily, done away with before anyone could stop the damage, or salvage what was lost, or even try to save him. ~ Alice Hoffman

If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. ~ Haruki Murakami

Some journalists have described the South Pole as 'hell on earth.' Others refer to my time here as 'an ordeal.' They would be surprised to know how beautiful Antarctica has seemed to me, with its waves of ice in a hundred shades of blue and white, its black winter sky, its ecstatic wheel of stars. They would never understand how the lights of the Dome welcomed me from a distance, or how often I danced and sang and laughed here with my friends. And how I was not afraid. ~ Jerri Nielsen

I turned too many
shades of blue
choking on all the things
I wanted to say to you.
"I thought this was real"
must have gone down
wrong and
"Come back to me"
was lost somewhere
in my windpipe. ~ Christina Hart

A second technician gauges Werner's eye color against a chromatic scale on which sixty or so shades of blue are displayed. Werner's color is himmelblau, sky blue. To assess his hair color, the man snips a lock of hair from Werner's head and compares it to thirty or so other locks clipped to a board, arrayed darkest to lightest. "Schnee," the man mutters, and makes a notation. Snow. Werner's hair is lighter than the lightest color on the board. ~ Anthony Doerr

At one point, Joylene (a large woman from HR with four framed photos of her cats and one of her deceased father holding a trout on her desk) actually stated, "Ooo, I love Excel." Who says, "Ooo, I love Excel."? How is it even a sentence? Each time Joylene had a question, she waved her pen, with a huge rainbow colored feather taped to the end, above her head while making excited "uh, uh, um, uh" noises. "Yes, Joylene?" "If I want my columns color coded, am I able to mix my own preferred range of blues from a palette or do I have to select from the four-thousand shades of blue it already has?" "And that, your Honor, is when the defendant leapt across the desk. I enter into evidence the rainbow feather pen." If there ever comes a time where I'm typing numbers into boxes and decide I'd really like those boxes with numbers to be a specific shade of blue, it will be time to turn off the computer, pack my things, and start a fire. ~ David Thorne

The kid curled his fingers inward, like he was motioning them to come play with him, and in a total Magneto way, the guns flew from the officers' hands, zinging toward the kid. They, too, stopped in midair and lit up in vibrant shades of blue. A second later the guns were dust.
Kat's hands dug into my back. "Holy ... "
"Shit," I finished. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude. ~ Lana Del Rey

One soft humid early spring morning driving a winding road across Mount Tamalpais, the 2,500-foot mountain just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a bend reveals a sudden vision of San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live in that place of blue hills and blue buildings, though I do live there, I had just left there after breakfast. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I am not as strong as my words pretend to be. Not
as quiet as these caesuras promise. This heart is a patchwork quilt of people
that leave different shades of blue inside of me. ~ Shinji Moon

It is naive to think you know someone so well.

To think that whatever time you have shared in knowing their

habits, their history, their stories, their weaknesses, their

strengths, their wounds, and deepest corners of their heart could ever sum them up-- is unjust.
It is a shame to be unaware of the shifts and changes that happen every day, every moment, right before your eyes. The little crinkles around her eyes that get ever-so-slightly deeper and wiser. The silver linings of her hair. The wonders of time and how they show their presence in such ways. You may think that a flower is simply a flower. A flower that looks and smells just as simply as it always has. Or that the ocean is simply salt water and blue. The flower is always moving, changing, blossoming, and giving life to the birds and the bees. The ocean's tides rise and fall with the phases of the moon. The currents change direction. And depending on how the sun hits the water, the colors and shades of blue are in fact, infinite. Everything around you and everyone is always changing. Take time to smell the roses. Take time to watch the tide. Take time to see your love with new eyes. It would be a shame to miss it. ~ Kayko Tamaki

She could not imagine why these companies all chose shades of blue for their logos. Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles. Come ~ Deborah Harkness

Beyond the slumpstone wall lay a backyard, a swimming pool. Dappled with morning light and tree shadows, the water glimmered in shades of blue from sapphire to turquoise, as might a trove of jewels left by long-dead pirates who had sailed a sea since vanished. ~ Dean Koontz

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put 'brown'. I put 'brown', but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look atr other people's eyes. ~ Elizabeth Moon

In 1916, Infants' and Children's Wear Review insisted upon pink for boys and blue for girls. In 1939, Parents magazine claimed that pink was a good color for boys because it was a pale version of red, which was the color of Mars, the war god. Blue was good for girls because it was the color of Venus, and of the Virgin Mary. So, pink for girls is a relatively recent trend, and utterly random. ~ Tim Gunn

All at once the hard, cold earth seemed to explode. The brown surface of the world dissolved and in its place was an impossible, an inconceivable, an unbelievable profusion of color: green grass and purple and red flowers; sprays of lily; white baby's breath that covered the hills; nodding fields of bright yellow daffodils; rich purple moss. The trees burst forth with new leaves. The weeping willow tree was a mass of tiny pale green leaves, thousands of them, which whispered and sighed together as the wind moved through its branches. There were fat heads of lettuce in the fields, and cucumbers lying like jewels among them, and enormous red tomatoes surrounded by thick, knotted vines.

And for the first time in 1,728 days, the clouds broke apart and there was dazzling blue sky, and light beyond what anyone could remember.

The sun had come out at last. ~ Lauren Oliver

In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you're feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let's face it: the reason you're blue is that there isn't anyone to make them for you. ~ Nora Ephron

Picnic, Lightning

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows

the limp roots of red impatiens -
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next. ~ Billy Collins

It was all still there, an immense quilt of bold, fantastical human will: the faded tawny golds and grays of the descending rooftops and scorched chimney pots, the cold steel-blue river with its fabled Left and Right Banks, the towers and steeples and crooked cobblestone streets, bisected by wide, brutish boulevards. As seductive as a mirage, but every slab of stone, every silent or uproarious inch of it, real. She had not returned triumphant as a brilliant painter or a self-made woman whose only worry about money was how to spend it ... but she had come back to Paris anyway. It was hard to imagine being unhappy here. ~ Christine Sneed

They were so sorry, dear; they went down to meet each other in a taxi, honey; they had preferences in smiles and had met in Hindustan, and shortly afterward they must have quarrelled, for nobody knew and nobody seemed to care - yet finally one of them had gone and left the other crying, only to feel blue, to feel sad. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I adore that pink, it is the navy blue of India! ~ Diana Vreeland

Damn it," the man facing her muttered. "Who are you?"
"Lady Pandora Ravenel. I'll tell them..." Her voice trailed away as she found herself looking up at an arrogant young god, tall and big framed, every line of him taut with feline grace. The tiny pendant lamp overhead sent sunstruck golden glints playing among the thick, well-cut layers of his amber hair. His eyes were winter-blue, his cheekbones high and straight, the line of his jaw hard enough to chisel marble. The full, sensuous curves of his lips lent a note of erotic dissonance to his otherwise classic features. One glance at him was enough to make her feel as if she were trying to breathe at high altitude. What would it do to a man's character to be so inhumanly beautiful? It couldn't be anything good. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The Net
I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea. ~ Sara Teasdale

He says the earth is an oval marble that nobody can win. He says the sky is not blue and the grass is not green.
He says everything is a matter of perception. ~ Sherman Alexie

The worst effects of breathing polluted air are experienced where it is densest: in traffic. Spending time on and near highways, freeways, and other busy roads is terrible for your health. How near is a question that is still being studied, but researchers believe that the effects are worst within either a fifth or a third of a mile. People in cars or buses are exposed to considerably more air pollution, perhaps because of, rather than despite, being in a closed space. People walking and bicycling on or next to roads breathe more air, but inhale somewhat less pollution; and cyclists have been found to have even less risk if they are on paths that are separated from the road. ~ Elly Blue

The most remarkable thing about him were his eyes. They were laughing eyes, at once both joyous and tender: they were the radiant pale blue of a sky slipping toward evening in Heaven, when angels who had been sweet all day found themselves tempted to sin. ~ Cassandra Clare

If I should get lost in all the chaos of the world, pull your butterly net and catch me in the beauty of your love. Remind me of important things -- friends, flowers, fields of cool grass under bare feet, blue skies above, rain on my face, and freedom... freedom to make a difference, freedom to be me. Pull out your butterfly net and remind me of these things, and most of all... your undying love. ~ Melody Lee

You're Beautiful

Like the green romance of a bud
and lily's pink, gentle sway.
You: more beautiful than yesterday.

Wildflower's blue surprise.
Daisy's white, sunny play.
You're more beautiful than yesterday.

Orchid's purple mystery
Mum's bronze ole`
You: more beautiful than yesterday.

Rose's orange perfume,
even tulip's yellow secrets say:
You're more beautiful that yesterday.

Poppy's red, teasing lips,
but YOUR beauty will never fade.

You: more lovely than yesterday,

You: my dazzling bouquet. ~ Pat Mora

Let the blue of the sky and ocean take your blue away when you feel blue ~ Munia Khan

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom. ~ Virginia Woolf

While I stood on the front porch, watching him climb into his vehicle, I breathed in the humid air. I looked at the cloudless sky, and the blue vastness of it made me think about the endless opportunities that lay ahead for me. Life, I knew, was going to be different now ... better. I was going to live for today and for the future. Dear past ... thank you for the lessons. Dear future ... I am ready. ~ Debra Kay

Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy. We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space. Value innovation places equal emphasis on value. ~ W.Chan Kim

Nineteen years since that day. Nineteen whole years! And I'm still looking for you. I will never stop looking for you.

Often you appear when I expect it least. Earlier today I was trapped in some pointless dark thought or other, my body clenched like a metal fist. Then suddenly you were there: a bright autumn leaf cartwheeling over a dull pewter lawn. I uncurled and smelled life, felt dew on my feet, saw shades of green. I tried to grab hold of you, that vivid leaf, cavorting and wriggling and giggling. I tried to take your hand, look straight at you, but like an optical black spot you slid silently sideways, just out of reach.

I will never stop looking for you. ~ Rosie Walsh

The fourth elf was younger than the others. This showed in the perfection of her skin, the agility and speed of her movements, and in the brightness of her dress. Her long silk garment was yellow and gold and green, and she wore a blue silk choker with a trailing silver scarf at her neck matching another at her waist. There was fire in her dark eyes which added to her overpowering beauty. ~ Ian Livingstone

At his words, a bolt of longing tore through her, for blue skies and deep snow, for wild places and for silence, for his fire-lit house in the fir-grove, for his hands in the darkness. ~ Katherine Arden

He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. ~ Thomas Hardy

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family.
After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping."
"I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder."
Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?"
"It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat."
"Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness.
While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest s ~ Lisa Kleypas

Sonny was a spiky ray of light to those lucky enough to be close to him, but life had taught him to play his cards close to his chest. ~ Garrett Leigh

I personally have a cunt. Sometimes it's 'flaps' or 'twat', but most of the time, it's my cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word. I like that my fire escape also doubles up as the most potent swearword in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say 'cunt'. It's like I have a nuclear bomb in my pants, or a tiger, or a gun.

Compared to this the most powerful swearword men have got out of their privates is 'dick', which is frankly vanilla, and I believe you're allowed to use on, like, Blue Peter if something goes wrong. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing, and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer simple act of calling someone 'a girl' - I love that 'cunt' stands, on its own, as the supreme unvanquishable word. It has almost mystic resonance. It is a cunt - we all know it's a cunt - but we can't call it a cunt. We can't say the actual word. It's too powerful. Like Jews can never utter the Tetragrammaton - an must make do with 'Jehovah', instead. ~ Caitlin Moran

So that is how we came to be standing in a sparse room, in a nondescript building in the barracks at SAS HQ--just a handful out of all those who had started out so many months earlier.
We shuffled around impatiently. We were ready.
Ready, finally, to get badged as SAS soldiers.
The colonel of the regiment walked in, dressed casually in lightweight camo trousers, shirt, beret, and blue SAS belt.
He smiled at us.
"Well done, lads. Hard work, isn't it?"
We smiled back.
"You should be proud today. But remember: this is only the beginning. The real hard work starts now, when you return to your squadron. Many are called, few are chosen. Live up to that." He paused.
"And from now on for the rest of your life remember this: you are part of the SAS family. You've earned that. And it is the finest family in the world. But what makes our work here extraordinary is that everyone here goes that little bit extra. When everyone else gives up, we give more. That is what sets us apart."
It is a speech I have never forgotten.
I stood there, my boots worn, cracked, and muddy, my trousers ripped, and wearing a sweaty black T-shirt.
I felt prouder than I had ever felt in my life.
We all came to attention--no pomp and ceremony. We each shook the colonel's hand and were handed the coveted SAS sandy beret.
Along the way, I had come to learn that it was never about the beret--it was about what it stood for: camaraderie, sweat, skill, hu ~ Bear Grylls

He looked into those blue eyes like a man seeking some vision of the increate future of the universe. ~ Cormac McCarthy

There's a certain time of day after sunset when people naturally seem to feel the urge to gather by a fire or a stove or a hibachi or another common source of heat and food, and hunker down together to eat and drink. Call it the blue hour. ~ Kate Christensen

The sky was a flawless blue, the color of surgical gloves. ~ Mira Grant

Please we would much rather sail free we mean you no harm I promise " he floated upright in the water frowning then bowed his head in agreement. With a flick of their tails the blue men dived and were gone. "I promise " Hannah breathed. Of course. "That's a hard one to rhyme with. Scarlet Max and Donovan leapt up and down shouting with joy. "I knew you could do it" Scarlet shrieked. "It was just luck " Hannah said "I didn't have time to think. I just said the first thing that came into my mind. I could've said I swear and then he could have said pear or mare or square ... " "That was amazing " Donovan said. "You were so quick" I didn't feel quick " Hannah grinned " I felt as thick as a brick." "O goodness she cant stop " Donovan said laughing. ~ Kate Forsyth

Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, a little too heartily, "So this is the library." There certainly couldn't be any doubt on that score; never had a room so resembled popular preconception. The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood, although the finish had worn off the edges in spots, where books had scraped against the wood in passing one too many times. A whimsical iron staircase curved to the balcony, the steps narrowing into pie-shaped wedges that promised a broken neck to the unwary. I tilted my head back, dizzied by the sheer number of books, row upon row, more than the most devoted bibliophile could hope to consume in a lifetime of reading.

In one corner, a pile of crumbling paperbacks - James Bond, I noticed, squinting sideways, in splashy seventies covers - struck a slightly incongruous note. I spotted a moldering pile of Country Life cheek by jowl with a complete set of Trevelyan's History of England in the original Victorian bindings. The air was rich with the smell of decaying paper and old leather bindings. Downstairs, where I stood with Colin, the shelves made way for four tall windows, two to the east and two to the north, all hung with rich red draperies checked with blue, in the obverse of the red-flecked blue carpet. On the west wall, the bookshelves surrendered pride of place to a massive fireplace, topped with a carved hood to make Ivanhoe proud, and large enough to roast a serf. In short, the library was a Gothic fantasy. ~ Lauren Willig

Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

About a year ago, out of the blue, I just wrote a bunch of songs. ~ Rick Moranis

The story is told of Lincoln's first meeting with Mary at a festive party. Captivated by her lively manner, intelligent face, clear blue eyes, and dimpled smile, Lincoln reportedly said, "I want to dance with you in the worst way." And, Mary laughingly told her cousin later that night, "he certainly did. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

He framed her face with his calloused hands and looked down at her. His beautiful blue eyes searched her face and all her fears fled. In his eyes she saw everything she needed. Gentleness, kindness, passion and ... maybe, just maybe a hint of love. ~ Tamara Hoffa

Just try it once - a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen anywhere. It does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or another the light of the sun always makes itself felt. Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed if you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes. ~ Hermann Hesse

I think about how Grandpa Z says the sky is blue because it's dusty and octopuses can unscrew the tops off jars and starfish have eyes at the tips of their arms. I think: No matter what happens, no matter how wretched and gloomy everything can get, at least Mrs. Sabo got to feel this. ~ Anthony Doerr

I think it's common sense to shy away from the erotic. Perhaps this grand experiment, which started with Lady Chatterley's Lover, of seeing what you can write and how you can write about sex, has reached a certain weary terminus with Fifty Shades of Grey. ~ Richard Flanagan