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1 " Finally, I will never forget stopping near a lovely young girl still strapped to her seat, breathing slightly. Her blouse was white, her slacks were blue. At the end of the trousers were two snow-white ankle bones where her feet used to be. I had never seen the whiteness of bones that are freshly exposed like that. "
― Laurence Gonzales , Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival
2 " I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know. "
― Charles Baudelaire , Flowers of Evil: A Selection
3 " My CountryI don't have any caps left made back homeNor any shoes that trod your roadsI've worn out your last shirt quite long agoIt was of Sile clothNow you only remain in the whiteness of my hairIntact in my heartNow you only remain in the whiteness of my hairIn the lines of my foreheadMy country-Nazim Hikmet "
― Fatima Bhutto
4 " When I lived on the Bluff in Yokohama I spend a good deal of my leisure in the company of foreign residents, at their banquets and balls. At close range I was not particularly struck by their whiteness, but from a distance I could distinguish them quite clearly from the Japanese. Among the Japanese were ladies who were dressed in gowns no less splendid than the foreigners’, and whose skin was whiter than theirs. Yet from across the room these ladies, even one alone, would stand out unmistakably from amongst a group of foreigners. For the Japanese complexion, no matter how white, is tinged by a slight cloudiness. These women were in no way reticent about powdering themselves. Every bit of exposed flesh—even their backs and arms—they covered with a thick coat of white. Still they could not efface the darkness that lay below their skin. It was as plainly visible as dirt at the bottom of a pool of pure water. Between the fingers, around the nostrils, on the nape of the neck, along the spine—about these places especially, dark, almost dirty, shadows gathered. But the skin of the Westerners, even those of a darker complexion, had a limpid glow. Nowhere were they tainted by this gray shadow. From the tops of their heads to the tips of their fingers the whiteness was pure and unadulterated. Thus it is that when one of us goes among a group of Westerners it is like a grimy stain on a sheet of white paper. The sight offends even our own eyes and leaves none too pleasant a feeling. "
― Jun'ichirō Tanizaki , In Praise of Shadows
5 " «Zaki never grew tired of looking at the whiteness of Roar’s hair. It was as if the moon and the stars had taken root in it. And perhaps they had, so long ago when Roar travelled amongst them in his space shuttle.»From " The Stars Seem So Far Away "