“The killer simply picked any one of the men in gray suits and followed them from office building to cash machine, from lunchtime restaurant back to office building. Those gray suits were not happy, yet showed their unhappiness only during moments of weakness. Punching the buttons of a cash machine that refused to work. Yelling at a taxi that had come too close. Insulting the homeless people who begged for spare change. But the killer also saw the more subtle signs of unhappiness. A slight limp in uncomfortable shoes. Eyes closed, head thrown back while waiting for the traffic signal. The slight hesitation before opening a door. The men in gray suits wanted to escape, but their hatred and anger trapped them.”

“Oh confound that gray-and-scarlet suit!" Sophie said. "I refuse to believe that I was the one that got caught with it!”

“People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.”

“The same crime element that white people are scared of black people are scared of. While they waiting for legislationto pass, we next door to the killer. All them killers they let out,they're in that building. Just because we black,we get along with the killers? What is that?”

“She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy gray and holding communion only with the birds and trees; a life of retirement away from the vain world; a life into which no man came. It had its attractions, but she decided that gray did not suit her.”

“Even the intellectual crowd will have none of me. Physically, I look like one of them. Graying at the temples, I walk with a slight limp and wear thick glasses.”