Morpho but purple

"Each angel-being was distinctly an individual, and yet they had more in common with each other than with any human she had seen. What they shared was a shimmering, darting play of intelligence and feeling that seemed to sweep over them all simultaneously."

"They shone not as if they were burning but as if, wherever they were and however dark the night, sunlight was shining on them."

"…she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling."

— Philip Pullman, from ‘The Subtle Knife’

"0, the radiant angels scattered by the purple night winds."

— Georg Trakl, Poems and Prose; from 'Dream and Derangement', tr. Alexander Stillmark

"mind the angels my love"

— Alejandra Pizarnik, The Galloping Hour: French Poems; from ‘alexandra and arta’, tr. Patricio Ferrari & Forrest Gander

"The angels shone with a blinding light. Their wings were as white as swans’ wings and their robes were the shifting colours of mother-of-pearl, fish scales or skies before thunder. In their hands they held flaming lances and their eyes blazed with a divine fury."

— Susanna Clarke, from 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'

"Up above, the angels / in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing / are braiding one another’s hair, which is strawberry blond / and the texture of cold rivers."

— Robert Hass, Human Wishes; from ‘Privilege of Being’

"Angels have mouths but lack the power of speech. They speak to God by dancing."

"...like an angel, all flame."

— Nikos Kazantzakis, from 'Report to Greco', tr. P. A. Bien

"I’ll just / tell you this: / only if there are angels in your head will you / ever, possibly, see one."

— Mary Oliver, Felicity; from 'The World I Live In'

"and the nature of the angels went unexplained,"

— Anne Sexton, Live or Die; from ‘Consorting With Angels’

"Below an angel is knocking at the gate with crystal finger."

— Georg Trakl, Poems and Prose; from 'Transformation of Evil', tr. Alexander Stillmark

"...in you there were the seeds of an angel, my kind of angel, with fire and swords and blazing power..."

— Sylvia Plath, from ‘The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956′

"But I wished to stay with the angel in the dark wood at night."

— Stevie Smith, Harold’s Leap; from ‘I rode with my darling…’

"The night is cold and delicate and full of angels"

— John Ashbery, Rivers and Mountains; from ‘The Ecclesiast’

"The angel of midnight / Talks with me until it’s light."

— Anna Akhmatova, from 'Reed', tr. Judith Hemschemeyer

"In the silence / The poppy blue eyes of an angel are opened."

— Georg Trakl, Poems and Prose; from 'Amen', tr. Alexander Stillmark

"a hole in the night / suddenly invaded by an angel"

— Alejandra Pizarnik, from ‘Diana’s Tree’, tr: Cecilia Rossi

"I hear now / the rustle of the snow / the angels listening above me"

— Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie; from ‘Resurrection’

"The physical aspect of the storm is the manifestation of the storm angel’s song - or psalm - to the divine."

— Aaron Leitch, from ‘Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires: The Classical Texts of Magick Deciphered’

"(I recall the wind, the lilacs, the gray, the perfume, the song, and the wind, but I don't recall what the angel said.)"

— Alejandra Pizarnik, from ‘The Galloping Hour: French Poems’; an etching, tr. Patricio Ferrari & Forrest Gander

"Angels, come breathe with me."

Ted Hughes, Recklings; from ‘Trees’