“His dreams were clear blue”

“She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle.”

“I well understand why analysts demand high payment, for what can be more tedious than listening to another person recount his dreams?”

“In the eyelid-blue betweenness the wordy sounds of the whiskey-drinkers spilled distantly.”

“Annabel played and sang it; she was the oldest of the sisters and the loveliest, though it was a chore to pick among them, for they were like quadruplets of unequal height. One thought of apples, compact and flavorful, sweet but cider-tart; their hair, loosely plaited, had the blue luster of a well-groomed ebony racehorse, and certain features, eyebrows, noses, lips when smiling, tilted in an original style that added humor to their charms. The nicest thing was that they were a bit plump: "pleasingly plump" describes it precisely.”

“You know those days when you get the mean reds?""Same as the blues?""No," she said slowly. "No, the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of...”

“As a child he had often thought of killing himself, but those were sentimental reveries born a wish to punish his father and mother and other enemies.”