People will have differing views on this. I personally don't mind the "white on red"; however, plain red text (on my customised dark-grey background) looked jarring to me and was difficult to read.

I've just checked the source code for a quip I got. It looked like this:

<td class="nodelet_body">
...
<br>
You gained 1 experience point. Didn't see that coming did ya?
...
</td>
[download]

I think it would be good if the quip was isolated in its own <span>, with a class attribute indicating the type of quip. I'll suggest the following class attribute values:

• class="quip-xp" — for XP Nodelet quip.
• class="quip-cb" — for Chatterbox quip.
• class="quip-mb" — for Monkbar quip.

Doing this will allow custom colours for quips via CSS in Display Settings. And, of course, all sorts of other decorations could be applied.

As an example, the source code (above) would become:

<td class="nodelet_body">
...
<br>
You gained 1 experience point. <span class="quip-xp">Didn't see that c
+oming did ya?</span>
...
</td>
[download]

span[class^="quip-"] {
    /* wanted properties & values here */
}
[download]

.quip-xp, .quip-cb {
    /* wanted properties & values here */
}
.quip-mb {
    /* wanted properties & values here */
}
[download]