“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”

“Once there was a queen in a palace of bread.Sing blue, sing white, stay up all night.She nibbled on the walls and gobbled up her bed.Sing white, sing blue, sing ballyhoo.The people begged a crumb from their robust queen.Sing blue, sing white, she ate all night.She would not share a thing until it turned green.So white, so blue, the mold it grew.”

“It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic.”

“Here it comes," Niten said. The whites of his eyes,his teeth and his tongue had turned blue."Ready," Prometheus said.Nicholas Flamel touched the green scarab he now wore around his neck and felt it grow warm in his hand.The spell was a simple one,something he had performed a thousand times before, though never on such a large scale.A red-skinned head broke the surface of the water...followed by a second...and a third...and then a fourth head,black and twice as large as the others appeared. Suddenly there were seven heads streaking toward them."Let's hope no one if filming this," Niten murmered."No one would believe it anyway." Prometheus grinned. "Seven-headed monsters simply do not exist.If anyone saw it,they'd say it was Photoshopped.”

“Lizzie said that if you imagined you were standing on the moon, looking down on the earth, you wouldn't be able to see the itty-bitty people racing around worrying you wouldn't see the barn falling in or the cow stuck in the pond; you wouldn't see the mean Granger kids squirting mustard on your white dress. You would see the most beautiful blue oceans and green lands, and the whole earth would look like a giant blue-and-green marble floating in the sky. Your worries would seem so small, maybe invisible.”

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”

“It's there. The white rose among the dried flowers in the vase. Shriveled and fragile, but holding on to that unnatural perfection cultivated in Snows greenhouse. I grab the vase, stumble down to the kitchen, and throw its contents into the embers. As the flowers flare up, a burst of blue flame envelops the rose and devours it. Fire beats roses again.”