“Her beauty is best experienced in the dark.”

“Beautiful women, as experienced men know,
Are but darkness wrapped in dazzling light aglow.
A life of friv'lous youth and worried age,
Its futile course to futile death will flow.”

Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) Arabic poet from the Abbasid era

“We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”

Stefan Zweig book The World of Yesterday

“There was her face, like a summer peach, beautiful and warm, and the light of the candles reflected in her dark eyes. [He] held his breath. The entire world waited and held its breath.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“Kieran glanced at her with shimmering eyes. Neither looked quite human: The black eye was too dark, the silver too metallic. And yet the overall effect was haunting, inhumanly beautiful.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

“Our country has experienced many divisive dark days, but God’s hand has guided us through it all.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

“Her joy with him was like nothing she had ever experienced. His love for her felt like a miracle.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer