One day, they found an irregularly shaped stone, about the size of a tea tray, its upper surface pitted with small hemispherical holes.

NEWYORKER: The Sanctuary

The golden yellow hue of this large pear-shaped stone is so intense and so deep that the Gemological Institute of America ranks it among the rarest of gemstones in its class.

FORBES: Flaming Yellow 32-Carat Diamond May Fetch $8M at Auction

Grieving mothers shaped from marble lay prostrate on the lids of stone caskets.

BBC: The Recoleta Cemetery: Silent theatre and city of the dead

The Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, a city in northwest Turkey, is a magnificent stone edifice, with four minarets and an austere, octagonal-shaped body supporting a large dome.

NEWYORKER: The Next Crusade

Then he discovered a new Japanese method of cutting diamonds: When viewed under a low-magnification (3x) lens, the stone refracted light in such a way as to give off a pattern of eight heart-shaped sparkles at the bottom of the diamond and eight arrow-shaped fire-bursts through the top--hence the name "hearts-and-arrows" diamonds.

FORBES: Stones on fire

I'm standing at a first-floor window, an arched stone one like you'd find in a church, my face close up to the diamond-shaped leaded panes, keeping lookout.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The Sister'