The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.
Interpretation
The quote compares a Montana sunset to a bruise, suggesting beauty combined with a sense of danger or poison in the sky.
In this quote, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses vivid imagery to describe a Montana sunset, likening it to a giant bruise that signifies beauty marred by harm or toxicity. The metaphor suggests that while sunsets can be breathtaking, there is an underlying darkness or foreboding represented by the 'darkened arteries' and 'poisoned sky', prompting reflection on the relationship between nature's beauty and its potential for negativity.
In practice
In a nature documentary, when discussing the complexities of environmental beauty and degradation.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.
There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.
I have tried to keep my eco-anxiety at bay, to box it into my working life. But every month this becomes more difficult. The rising sense of panic I feel is entirely rational; we should all be feeling it. But we can't live with it through every hour of every day.
The morning pouring everywhere, its golden glory on the air.
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Unlike Washington, which is stuck in ideological gridlock, Americans feel the impact of climate change in their own hometowns and they know something must be done.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.