“You imagine Pacific islands, the tropical nature of the place and the bright colour of the sands and beaches. It's all very grey and dull because of the ash that just blankets the entire land.”

Press comment in Hawaii (25 April 1989)

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.
Song lyrics, In Utero (1993)

Poem "As Ilhas Afortunadas", verses 11-12
Message
Original: São ilhas afortunadas,
São terras sem ter lugar

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Pretty Halcyon Days

Talk at UC Berkeley on the massacres in Indonesia and East Timor, 1982; Republished at " Program Information: Chomsky on Indonesia and E. Timor, 1982 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=11140" at radio4all.net, accessed May 23, 2014.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Context: There are significant strategic interests [in Oceania], and there's a lot of stuff going on that's important. Not just the United States. For example, France is doing some really vicious things there, in fact they're just wiping out islands because they want them for nuclear tests. And when the socialist government in France is asked, "Why to do this?", they say, "Well look, we have to have nuclear tests." Well, if you have to have nuclear tests, why not have them in southern France? [audience laughter] Why have them in some island in the Pacific? Well, the answer to that is clear, after all they're just a bunch of little brown people or something. But you can't say that exactly, especially if you're a socialist, so something else is said.

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Pretty Halcyon Days

54 min 55 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Journeys in Space and Time [Episode 8]
Context: Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.

Quote of Richter on his 'Grey Paintings', in a letter to nl:Edy de Wilde, 23 February 1975; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Grey-paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/grey-paintings-9
1970's
Variant: It [grey color] makes no statement whatever... It has the capacity that no other color has, to make 'nothing' visible. To me grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent for indifference, non-commitment, absence of opinion, absence of shape (note 99).... but, grey like formlessness and the rest, can be real only as an idea.... The painting is then a mixture of grey as a fiction and grey as a visible, designated area of color.

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279