Victoria Finlay · 464 pages
Rating: (55K votes)
“Years later the Romantic poet John Keats would complain that on that fateful day Newton had “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to prismatic colors.” But color—like sound and scent—is just an invention of the human mind responding to waves and particles that are moving in particular patterns through the universe—and poets should not thank nature but themselves for the beauty and the rainbows they see around them.”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“What they signified was precious, but what they were was not.”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“Art history is so often about looking at the people who made the art; but I realized at that moment there were also stories to be told about the people who made the things that made the art. My”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“White paint can be made of many things. It can come from chalk or zinc, barium or rice, or from little fossilized sea creatures in limestone graves. The Dutch artist Jan Vermeer even made some of his luminescent whites with a recipe that included alabaster and quartz—in lumps that took the light reflected into the painting and made it dance.3”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“The use of natural pigments is similarly embodied in the Orthodox teaching that humanity—like all Creation—was created pure but not perfect, and the purpose of being born is to reach your true potential.”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“But color—like sound and scent—is just an invention of the human mind responding to waves and particles that are moving in particular patterns through the universe—and poets should not thank nature but themselves for the beauty and the rainbows they see around them. While”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“Chauvet Cave: The Discovery of the World’s Oldest Paintings, Jean-Marie Chauvet”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“When our eyes see the whole range of visible light together, they read it as “white.” When some of the wavelengths are missing, they see it as “colored.”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“The best way I’ve found of understanding this is to think not so much of something “being” a color but of it “doing” a color.”
― Victoria Finlay, quote from Color: A Natural History of the Palette
“Can't I just shoot you in the ass with paintball pellets? Those fuckers hurt. I'm an expert marksman with firearms. I could turn your ass red, green, blue, whatever the fuck color you want.”
― Tymber Dalton, quote from The Reluctant Dom
“It's about 65 degrees, so it feels like when the air conditioner is up on high. I can bear it, so I'm going for a walk. Today. Right now. In the sunshine. Because I can.
Because I want to. Because I'm not going to just sit around and wait for stuff to happen anymore. I'm still me, and I have a life. It's a weird life, but it's still mine.
It's still mine.”
― Andrew Clements, quote from Things Not Seen
“Her eyes were still closed, and in the darkness, in her dark dress and coat, she seemed an assemblage of angular fragments...”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“You're trying to tell me that everything you've done is for a good cause. You think that all this killing is worth it because of the results. I'm not sure I agree. Lots of people work for charity; lots of people want to change the world. But they don't have to behave like you.”
― Anthony Horowitz, quote from Eagle Strike
“I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from After the Quake
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