“Does this wild errant need fade, like the colour of eyes do?”

“Western funerals: black hearses, and black horses, and fast-fading flowers. Why should black be the colour of death? Why not the colours of a sunset?”

“Sometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy's heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it's pure and reflects the light.”

“Do I still 'ave an eye?" I laughed. "Still there." He straightened with a sigh. "Too bad. I hear girls take a liking to a man with an eye patch." "Yes, when the eye was lost in some wildly romantic fashion like a sword fight or pistol duel. Not from smacking it on the eyepiece of a microscope. And you hardly need any more help with the ladies.”

“Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing, so ardent for those climes where all things end.”

“The sun was up - stuck like half a tinned apricot on a sky awash with all the colours of a fading bruise. Down below the living dead were forming their complaining queues at bus stops.”