Quotes About Contrast

But I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey... They are both oaks, even if they were planted in different forests. But then, m'lord, we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth.

When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.

That was the deal basically: catatonia without; frenzy within

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.

It is wonderful barefoot in New York. It is like walking on one big giant tomb!

None of us went to church, so we had a lot of time to watch them, the two parents leached of color, like photographic negatives, and then the five glittering daughters in their homemade dresses, all lace and ruffle, bursting with their fructifying flesh.

For instance, as the police arrive, there are girls lined along the street, girls in miniskirts, thigh-highs, and halter tops. (The sea wrack Milton hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jellyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel.)

I would rather receive a Pap smear from Captain Hook than venture out in New Year's Eve.

Although they're doing manual labor, they're both wearing tailored slacks and dressy leather shoes, which

The shot that won me over completely was of Coco clad in a pleated army-green skirt, with a matching military sweater, a tiny strand of pearls, a beanie, and wild-print knee socks, all by Gucci: it's like my id and my Girl Scout uniform hooked up in a fitting room at Bergdorf's.

was like a crystal bowl filled with warm kettle corn. But when you lifted it up and checked the bottom, you could see a layer of burnt, unpopped kernels. The kind that makes you flinch from the unexpected bitter taste. The kind that may cause you to chip a tooth.

Difference is the essence of extremity

Erect, it had been more impressive, a novel juxtaposition of hard and soft, with its glove of silky skin that slid against the stiff, veined flesh underneath.

College didn't erase the differences between how everyone grew up, but it disguised those differences—

I'm not sure whether that had to do with the humor, or with the unfashionable fairy-tale ending, which is very different from much of what I read in The New Yorker, where short stories seem to end with someone staring off at the white walls of a white room, and you think that something's happened but you're not quite sure what.

It's beautiful. Not a lie. But tornados were beautiful too.

It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay at.  The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall," and she is ever "drawing herself up to her full height."  At the "Barley Mow" she would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.

No, what was said in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn't want, and other people has what he does want. (Chapter VI)

É um facto curioso que, uma vez em terra, não haja ninguém que enjoe no mar. A bordo cruzamo-nos com imensa gente muito enjoada, de facto; barcos e barcos cheios deles. Porém, até hoje, ainda nunca encontrei um homem, em terra, que soubesse o que era enjoar no mar. Onde é que se metem, quando estão em terra firme, esses milhares e milhares de maus marinheiros que deambulam em cada navio permanece um mistério.

No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn't care for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it.  It seems to be the rule of this world. 

The mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and blood-thirsty when in a boat. 

O inglês típico, sabemos pelo velho cronista Froissart, aprecia seus prazeres com angústia; já a mulher inglesa vai um passo além: é na própria angústia que busca o prazer.

Ciekawa rzecz, nikt nigdy nie miaÅ' morskiej choroby na lÄ…dzie. Tylko na morzu spotyka siÄ™ mnóstwo ludzi chorych jak nieszcz??cie, caÅ'y ?ywy Å'adunek cierpiÄ…cych.