"Her face wore an expression like a moth."

–A Prisoner in Fairyland, Algernon Blackwood

should be a painting

"I lived a long time under vast porticoes
whose splendors altered with the sea all day;
by evening their majestic pillars turned,
row after row, into tall basalt caves.

Solemn and magical the waves rolled in
bearing images of heaven on the swell,
blending the sovereign music that they made
with sunset colors mirrored in my eyes."

-from "Previous Existence," Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire

in dreams

"...smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory."

"And since the dream of a woman who would love me was always present in my mind, during those summers that dream was impregnated with the coolness of the running waters; and whichever woman I conjured up, clusters of violet and reddish flowers would rise immediately on either side of her like complementary colors."

–Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

in the shimmering evenings of summer...

"He kissed her on her splendid eyes; he grew into her young Maenad's body, his heart numbed deliciously against the pressure of her narrow breasts. She was as lithe and yielding to his sustaining hand as a willow rod – she was bird-swift, more elusive in repose than the dancing water-motes upon her face. He held her tightly lest she grow into the tree again, or be gone amid the wood like smoke."

-Look Homeward, Angel; Thomas Wolfe

melancholic

"There was that touch of melancholy in his fastidious appearance that suggested the atmosphere of frustrated dreams."

–A Prisoner in Fairyland, Algernon Blackwood

oh, to be wealthy and bored...

"I'd ride a llama through a sea of champagne for a new experience."

–Michael O'Halloran, Gene Stratton-Porter