“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.”

“It was a light, brief kiss, but it was less an ending than a promise, and he was happy.”

“I like the heat the tenderness the edible the lusciousness the song of a single person the bathtub full of water to bathe myself beneath the water.... I like the wheat-fields the plough the apricots those flirts of the sun. But bread above all.”

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

“There's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.”

“You know that in an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therfore you should make the building… wall which is more distant less defined and bluer. …five times as far away make five times as blue.”

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I have five fingers, the middle one is for you.”

“You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.”

“The hope that clings to the least glimpse of blue
Amid a sky of murkiness; the fear
That sickens at itself; the fond deceit,
That will not see the truth; the tenderness,
That only asks to trust; and, at the last,
The knowledge we have known in vain so long
Comes like a thunderbolt, and crashes.”

“The sky was a rich, mindless, never-ending blue, like a promise of some ridiculous glory that wasn’t really there.”