Because I want to be winsome, Because of these passages, Because of these women:
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Chapter 1
Everyone on the bench was looking off the field, somewhere-even Owen, now-and I turned my attention to the intriguing object of their interest. Then I saw her: my mother. She'd just arrived. She was always late; she found the game boring too. She had an instinct for arriving just in time to take me and Owen home. She was even a sweater girl in the summer, because she favored those summer-weight jersey dresses; she had a nice tan, and the dress was a simple, white cotton one-clinging about the bosom and waist, full skirt below-and she wore a red scarf to hold her hair up off her bare shoulders. She wasn't watching the game. She was standing well down the left-field foul live, past third base looking into the sparse stands, the almost-empty bleacher seats-trying to see if there was anyone she knew there, I guess. I realized that everyone was watching her. This was nothing new for me. Everyone was always staring at my mother.-John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Chapter 1
Mother made beautiful clothes: simple, as I've described-most of them were white or black, but they were made of the best materials and they fitted her perfectly..."White for a tan," she said, " and black in the winter."- John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Chapter 3
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Chapter 1
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