standing in the garden, he promised that one day he would buy her all sorts of mysterious, rare, and marvelous things, including pure colour—not something that was coloured, but colour itself! Colour itself came in hard little circular discs, and was shiny like a polished stone or polished jewel, but with its colour deep inside it.

unlike a gemstone, it didn't emanate colour. Its colour sat there, turned inwards. Pure colour was introverted, like a shy little animal.

The way that colours in a movie are stronger than they are in life because there's nothing to compete with them.

It was the Fourth of July and a parade of ships from all over the world sailed slowly by. Each was "camouflaged" by a particular shade of blue, gray, blue-gray or gray-blue. Bright blue for Greece, pale blue for Portugal, silver-gray with white trim for France, steel-gray for the United States. Strictly local colors. Regional ideas about the ocean. No one could have sneak-attacked anywhere but off their own coasts. This is the trouble with the transparency of water.

I looked at the windows do every morning, to see what the light is, how it is, what the day is, what part. Yellow before, green after projected large: the yellow before means too much light but what does the green after mean.

Every room is painted a different color. As if there were one room for every separate mood: lacquer red for vehemence, pale turquoise for reveries, peach color for gentleness, green for repose, grey for work at the typewriter.