“They walked the water's vasty breadth of blue,
parting the restless billows on their way.”

“This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

“A cauliflower shows how an object can be made of many parts, each of which is like a whole, but smaller. Many plants are like that. A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth but irregularities at a smaller scale.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

“When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

“He walks away,
The sun goes down,
He takes the day but I'm grown
And in your way,
In this blue shade
My tears dry on their own.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

“I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.”

Marva Collins (1936–2015) American schoolteacher

“Flames were rising from the waters and in the flames a blue man lived.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

“A leaf carried away with the stream of water, it can crash along the way, or go on to the darkest parts of the unknown ocean.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author