“The only way I can describe the visions I witnessed with even faint approximation is in terms of other scenes which might arouse similar impressions of tortuous chaos: perhaps a festival of colors twisting in blackness, a tentacled abyss that alternately seems to glisten moistly as with some horrendous dew, then suddenly dulls into an arid glow, like bone-colored stars shining over an extra-terrestrial desert.”

“Indeed how might it be if things revealed their colors only when (in our terms) no light fell on them - if, for example, the sky were black? Could we not then say, only by black light do they appear to us in their full colors?”

“Unlike most of the other crayons, Black has hardly been used. People probably avoid Black because it isn't considered a happy color [...] I, however, like Black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience [...] I like Black, goddamnit, and I am going to give it its due.”

“Friendship is like the color black, it goes wit everything".”

“Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?”

“The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.”