Shades of Night: 9 Quotes About the Color Blue

So much conversation has revolved around the possibility of a “blue wave” stemming from 2018’s Midterm Elections, the term can’t help but take on symbolic connotations related to the color blue itself, which has long been associated with ideas such as trust, depth, and faith.

Have Democrats always upheld those ideals? Of course not. However, as the GOP staggers collectively along, inviting voters to view everything through a blood-mist of xenophobia, extreme partisanship, and blind patriotism, the idea of a cleansing flood begins to sound pretty enticing.

In the following passages, authors explore the color blue from numerous angles – the feelings it evokes, the associations that it’s easy (and sometimes painful) to draw from it. Suffering the election week blues? You’ll feel right at home here.

Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance, 1988
“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, 2005
“One soft humid early spring morning driving a winding road across Mount Tamalpais, the 2,500-foot mountain just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a bend reveals a sudden vision of San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live in that place of blue hills and blue buildings, though I do live there, I had just left there after breakfast.”

Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art, 2012
“‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color.”

Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets, 1959
“And everything burned in blue, everything a star”

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent, 1997
“One of his tears fell in my mouth, where it became a blue sapphire, source of strength, source of strength and eternal hope.”

Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water, 2017
“We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, 1920
“This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes.”

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 1970
“Dear God… I, I have caused a miracle. I gave her the eyes. I gave her the blue, blue, two blue eyes. Cobalt blue. A streak of it right out of your own blue heaven. No one else will see her blue eyes. But she will. And she will live happily ever after.”

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume, 1984
“Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you’re brown, you’ll find out you’re blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.”