“The hall door, beside which Rob worked that dreary noon, looked very old; its weathered brown paint was carved by long black lines left by leaks in the porch.”

“You have to work with the paint and work with whatever the day brings you. If it's a wee bit dreary out, you paint it. But paint it so it makes you glad to be inside near a cozy fire.”

“That very afternoon the police arrived at Cho Oyu in a line of toad-colored jeeps that appeared through the moving static of a small anxious sleet. They left their opened umbrellas in a row on the veranda, but the wind undid them and they began to wheel about - mostly black ones that leaked a black dye, but also a pink, synthetic made-in-Taiwan one, abloom with flowers.”

“The farmhouse sat on a rise at the end of a long dirt road, in a clearing surrounded by fruit trees and ninety acres of pines. It was painted white, and peeling, and some former hippie tenant had painted a mandala on the wall just inside the door with fine-point Magic Marker. I painted over it, but it bled through, again and again. I finally left it there, a pale and pastel version of itself, hanging ghostlike in the hall.”

“I see a red door and i want it painted black.”

“The old church tower and garden wallAre black with autumn rainAnd dreary winds foreboding callThe darkness down again”