“Kneeling in the keeping room where she usually went to talk-think it was clear why Baby Suggs was so starved for color. There was’t any except for two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout. The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature, the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black, brown and gray wool–the full range of the dark and the muted that thrift and modesty allowed. In that sober field, two patches of orange looked wild–like life in the raw.”

“Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put 'brown'. I put 'brown', but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look atr other people's eyes.”

“So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.”

“Life is not just black and white [...]. It's full of magnificent colors and... several Shades of Gray.”

“Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.”

“The color scheme of the whole sanatorium seemed to be based on liver. Dark, glowering woodwork, burnt-brown leather chairs, walls that might once have been white but had succumbed under a spreading malady of mod or damp. A mottled brown linoleum sealed off the floor.”