“Friday is a purple-velvet-sofa day for some poor woman who's finally reclaimed her life. A purple velvet sofa is a gal's symbol of freedom.”

“A purple velvet sofa is a gals symbol of freedom.”

“In her minds eye she sat there, in the domesticated golden sunlight on the velvet sofa, lapped around by carpets and books and mahogany, solitary and content, as if, in fact, cloistered.”

“I spent the next two weeks flopped on my grandmother's super-bourgeois rose-colored velvet sofa, consuming massive quantites of grapes, reading obsessively.”

“I have nothing to offer you' said Hactar faintly, 'but tricks of the light. It is possible to be comfortable with tricks of the light, though, if that is all you have.'His voice evanesced, and in the dark a long, velvet paisley-covered sofa coalesced into hazy shape.... At least, if it wasn't real, it did support them, and as that is what sofas are supposed to do, this, by any test that mattered, was a real sofa.”

“A dark purple sky filled with the first few evening stars made her feel small. She smiled; that was what she expected from the sky. All her life, she'd gone out at night and stood beneath that blue velvet darkness. It was her temple, the true house of God, and it never failed to remind her of her place.”