But she can go bleak and pale, too, and she sets the tone for many of the scenes with Crowe.
The visit had been no worse or better than other visits, but, as she sat there watching a polished Dad skull wobble atop some clothes she mostly recognized, her insides had gone bleak and dangerous.
There are novels to read and re-read (I'm going bleak with The Ghostwriter, Patrimony, and Exit Ghost), pieces of criticism to revisit (Elizabeth Hardwick's "Paradise Lost, Claudia Roth Pierpontt's Roth Unbound, maybe Katie Roiphe's "The Naked and the Conflicted" just to cause trouble), and a major biography by (past VICE contributor) Blake Bailey on the way.
The city's fiscal picture has gone from bleak to bleaker in recent months.
(New Yorkers, naturally, go for bleak charcoal).
The plot goes from bleak to sadistic, pulling out every melodramatic stop.
OVER the autumn and winter, the outlook for the court had gone from bleak to cautiously sunny.
"They say a great Test is like a novel, well, this has gone from Bleak House to Great Expectations," writes Aram.
"Morale around here has gone from bleak to bright," said Frank Malloy, a locksmith with the Department of Support Services, who credited the improvement to the new commissioner, Bill Jantzen, who previously was in charge of buildings and maintenance for Henry Schein, a health-care equipment supplier in Melville.
As end-of-humanity scenarios go, that bleak vision from Fritz Leiber's 1951 short story "A Pail of Air" is a fairly remote possibility.
