A Girl In Winter Quotes & Sayings

Truth is:
I was always that kind of girl.
Truth is:
they don't make dresses any whiter than
mine.
Truth is:
I am not Demeter's daughter.
I am Heisenberg's ripe tomato
I am Niels Bohr's piece on the side.
In the winter I am a particle.
In the summer I am a wave.
And I didn't get to be queen of hell
by letting folks off easy. — Catherynne M Valente

In a moment a world will lose its focus and become a different place. They say that blind people have been struck by their affliction without warning, and that Helen Keller found language and light in a word. For me, I suddenly knew, viscerally at least, a number of things about my town that I'd only ever suspected. The dog was a girl. The dog was a native girl. I dug her out of the snow with more care than I'd ever lifted a porcupine or a snapping rat, and feeling that she was still somewhat warm, that her wrappings of rags had protected her from the cold of a Manitoba winter, I placed my jacket around her and covered her head with my hat. Then I set a pace back to the farm that left a taste of blood in my mouth, freezing my lungs by running at minus thirty. — Barry Pomeroy

It was colder that winter than I knew cold could be, even though the girl from Minnesota down the hall declared it "nothing." Out in Oregon, snow had been a gift, a two-day dusting earned by enduring months of gray, dripping sky. But the wind whipping up the Hudson from the city was so vehement that even my bone marrow froze. Every morning, I hunkered under my duvet, unsure of how I'd make it to my 9:00 a.m. Latin class. The clouds spilled endless white and Ev slept in. — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Well, I was born in Miami, and then I lived for a long time in Tallahassee, and before that, Winter Haven, which is a tiny town in Florida. I was not a city girl. — Cheryl Hines

In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came to the end of a long road which had begun the night Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end of the road, there was nothing left of that girl. Hunger and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of war and the terrors of Reconstruction had taken away all warmth and youth and softness. About the core of her being, a shell of hardness had formed and, little by little, layer by layer, the shell had thickened during the endless months. — Margaret Mitchell

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

It had worked in the past, being calm, acting as though everything were normal. She hoped it would work again. "Gavriel, we have to go. Stop being so scary."
At that, he looked over and smiled again, spinning Midnight in his arms as if they'd been dancing. Winter caught her and held her upright.
"I can wait a little longer," Gavriel said. "A very little longer."
"The car keys," Tana demanded, holding out a trembling hand. He fished in his pockets - an utterly normal gesture - then dropped them into her palm ceremoniously. She picked up the bag of cash and jewels from beside the hood of the car, shoving it into her purse.
"I won't always obey you," he said softly. "One night you will ask me for something I cannot give."
She'd started to relax, but his words sent a fresh spike of terror up her spine. — Holly Black

That was on a night in August. Dad Lewis died early that morning and the young girl Alice from next door got lost in the evening and then found her way home in the dark by the streetlights of town and so returned to the people who loved her. And in the fall the days turned cold and the leaves dropped off the trees and in the winter the wind blew from the mountains and out on the high plains of Holt County there were overnight storms and three-day blizzards. — Kent Haruf

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. — Carol Ann Duffy

Before we light the Yule log, I want to give you this. You have been a very good girl this year, and a wonderful daughter." He held something out to her. Jaclyn hadn't noticed he was carrying anything. She looked down to see he was holding a branch with green leaves and white berries. She gasped, "It's beautiful!" and took the branch from his hand. "The berries reminded me of the winter snow," her father said softly. Jaclyn nodded. "But the green leaves belong in the summer!" She looked up at him. "The trees have long since lost their leaves. Where did you find it?" "I had to travel very far to find it." he told her, leaning in to add, "It's magical. — Laurel O'Donnell

We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one. For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love. Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever. But one feels that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength one has left. — Marcel Proust

Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young
man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the
pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in
winter. — Victor Hugo

A squirrel flies in," said Dr. Meescham. "This I did not expect at all. It is what I love about life, that things happen which I do not expect. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, we left the window open for this very reason, even in the winter. We did it because we believed something wonderful might make its way to us through the open window. Did wonderful things find us? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But tonight it has happened! Something wonderful!" Dr. Meescham clapped her hands. "A window has been left open. A squirrel flies in the window. The heart of an old woman rejoices! — Kate DiCamillo

Dolly said that when she was a girl she'd liked to wake up winter mornings and hear her father singing as he went about the house building fires; after he was old, after he'd died, she sometimes heard his songs in the field of Indian grass. Wind, Catherine said; and Dolly told her: But the wind is us - it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields - I've heard Papa clear as day. On — Truman Capote

I go back to Oberlin in the dead of winter to give a "convocation speech" in Finney Chapel, the largest and most historic of campus structures. In a subconscious nod to my college experience I forget to pack both tights and underwear and have to spend the weekend going commando in a wool skirt and knee socks. I am toured around the school like a stranger by a girl who didn't even go here. We stop at a glossy new cafe for tea and scones. She asks if I want a tour of the dormitories- no, I just want to wander around alone and maybe cry. — Lena Dunham

A young woman across the dock pulled her winter coat tightly around herself and ducked her chin down as the crowd of sailors passed. Her shoulders might have shaken, just a little, but she kept to her path without letting the men's boisterous laughter keep her from her course. In her I saw myself, a fellow lost girl, headstrong and headed anywhere but home. — William Ritter

The shadow raised its arm high in the air and I knew - I knew before I heard my name - that he'd found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn't make, the one I had marked with my blood and who had marked me with his tears, a Silencer all right, my silencer, stumbling toward me in the impossibly pure light of a late winter's sunrise promising spring. — Rick Yancey

Cynie Cory roams the outer reaches of the heart's territory, from the snowy winter of family life to the tropical jungles of love. She wears her heart on her sleeve and it is as big as the country she writes about. Is she the quintessential American girl? You bet she is, part Annie Oakley, part Emily Dickinson - sharpshooting poet of wild nights. She zooms in on the detritus of love - the broken fragments, the fallen leaves - and puts together a collage that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Watch out - she's driving down your street. — Barbara Hamby

An angel, legend has it, took pity on a little shepherd girl who had nothing to give to the Infant Jesus in his manger. The angel handed her a weed, but first transformed it into this beautiful flower of winter. — Allen Lacy

There isn't any poison oak in the winter. It's hard to convince a girl you're sexy when you can't stop scratching your ass because of the rash. -Jax Cullen — Jill Shalvis

I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter.
Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue. — George R R Martin

The sight of the money depressed her, because in such small familiar things the foreign country around her was best expressed. — Philip Larkin

The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness. — Haruki Murakami

Where did the time go? Yesterday, I was a girl, and today, I suddenly find myself in the autumn of my years with the cold winds of winter breathing down my neck. — Peggy Toney Horton

A heat wave crashes into my body and I tug at the collar of my winter coat. I could take this thing off and probably still sweat. The memories of his mouth moving against mine and how his hands pressed into my body flood my brain. I lick my lips in anticipation. I crave for him to kiss me again, but ... "Are you going to call me after?"
A small grin plays on his lips. "You aren't going to cut me any slack, are you?"
It's like he's begging me to tease him, and without thought, I slide back to the braver girl at the bar. "Is that a problem?"
He shakes his head. "Not from you." — Katie McGarry

Our first kiss, the first touch of our heating lips, the yearning reciprocating from both sides, I was lost in everything. But I had a sudden feeling of eyes staring at our acts and unnecessary muttering. I could feel it even with my closed eyes. So far the sober girl in me resisted and my palms struggled to escape. David realized my condition and he left me be. I could see anger in his eyes for the crowd around but he stayed calm for my sake. My heart purred. 'I am lost now!'
He sat next to me and didn't bother to look at anyone around. Though, we knew many looked upon us and then they turned their faces away. He was horny. I could see his bulge behind his winter suit. I avoided looking and forced myself to gaze into his eyes instead. His pair was fixed on mine, reading mine. I gave a wide smile in an attempt to hide my lust although it was clearly written over my face. — Delicious David

A young girl, a freshman, I met in a bar in Cambridge my junior year at Harvard told me early one fall that "Life is full of endless possibilities." I tried valiantly nog to choke on the beer nuts I was chewing while she gushed this kidney stone of wisdom, and I calmly washed them down with the rest of a Heineken, smiled and concentrated on the dart game that was going on in the corner. Needless to say, she did not live to see her sophomore year.That winter, her body was found floating in the Charles River, decapitated, her head hung from a tree on the bank, her hair knotted around a low-hanging branch, three miles away. — Bret Easton Ellis

Tell them I'm like you," Gavriel said as they began to slow down.
Aidan laughed. "I think they can see you're not like us anymore."
"No," he said. "Tell them you know me. That I'm like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them."
"Wait," said Winter. "Wait. Is he saying he wasn't at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a vampire?"
Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. "You know me," he said, and a chill went up Tana's spine. "You've known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face."
"What does he mean?" Midnight asked.
"I don't know," Winter said in an odd voice. "Nothing. — Holly Black

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret. — Audrey Niffenegger

I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection. — Nevil Shute

Take me home," she said, and the words hit me like a whip. I think I shook my head. "Take me home." There were levels of pain there, and subtlety, and an amazing cruelty. And I knew then that I'd never been hated, ever, as deeply or thoroughly as this wasted little girl hated me now, hated me for the way I'd looked, then looked away, beside Rubin's all-beer refrigerator.
So
if that's the word
I did one of those things you do and never find out why, even though something in you knows you could never have done anything else.
I took her home. — William Gibson

I will fly away to them, to the royal birds, and they will beat me, because I, that am so ugly, dare to come near them. But it is all the same. Better to be killed by them than to be pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the girl who takes care of the poultry yard, and to suffer hunger in winter!" And it flew out into the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans; these looked at it, and came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. "Kill me!" said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer a clumsy dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, but a - swan! — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Max was fascinated by the woman and more than a little curious about what she might be up to. Sarah Johnson had come from a two-parent, affluent home with a squeaky-clean past. She'd been the golden girl, high school cheerleader, valedictorian and had apparently glided through college without making a ripple, coming out with a bachelor of arts degree in literature. She'd married well, had six children and then one winter night, for some unknown reason, she'd driven her car into the Yellowstone River. Her body was never found. Because there were no skid marks on the highway, it had looked like a suicide. Foul play had never been suspected.
That was twenty-two years ago. Now she was back - with no memory of those years or why she'd apparently tried to take her own life.
Max wanted this story more than he wanted a hot cup of coffee this morning. — B. J. Daniels

Long, long ago, (said the voice), five hundred years ago or more, on a winter's day at twilight, a young man entered the Church with a young girl with ivy leaves in her hair. There was no one else there but the stones. No one to see him strangle her but the stones. He let her fall dead upon the stones and no one saw but the stones. He was never punished for his sin because there were no witnesses but the stones. The years went by and whenever the man entered the Church and stood among the congregation the stones cried out that this was the man who had murdered the girl with the ivy leaves wound into her hair, but no one ever heard us. But it is not too late! We know where he is buried! In the corner of the south transept! Quick! Quick! Fetch picks! Fetch shovels! Pull up the paving stones. Dig up his bones! Let them be smashed with the shovel! Dash his skull against the pillars and break it! Let the stones have vengeance too! It is not too late! It is not too late! — Susanna Clarke

But destiny grips us and, the next morning, in a soft winter rain, we buried the dead, paid silver coins, and then walked southward. We were a boy on the edge of being a grown man, a girl, and a dog, and we were going to nowhere. — Bernard Cornwell

They snatched the girl off her tire swing in the backyard and dragged her into the woods; her body made a shallow track in the snow, from her world to mine. I saw it happen. I didn't stop it.
It had been the longest, coldest winter of my life. Day after day under a pale, worthless sun. And the hunger- hunger that burned and gnawed, an insatiable master. — Maggie Stiefvater

I remember a time in a class on a cold winter morning a Japanese girl came with a surgical mask & I thought "wow people would go to extremes NOT to get sick in Japan" afterwards on a break I approached her & asked in a cynical manner: why the mask? Are you afraid of catching a cold? & then she said "in Japan you use it when YOU are under the weather & you don't want other people to get sick, it is the polite thing to do" wow! that's a lesson I will never forget — Pablo

When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. — Kenneth Grahame

It's a simple choice! We can all be good boys and wear our letter sweaters around and get our little degrees and find some nice girl to settle, you know, down with ... Take up what a friend of ours calls the hearty challenges of lawn care ... Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the hearts of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race satan himslef till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straight away ... They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a guy, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! We can, by god, let out demons loose and just wail on! — John L. Parker Jr.

I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl,
From summer she is made, my lovely summer girl,
I'd love to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl,
But I'm never warm enough for my lovely summer girl,
It's summer when she smiles, I'm laughing like a child,
It's the summer of our lives; we'll contain it for a while
She holds the heat, the breeze of summer in the circle of her hand
I'd be happy with this summer if it's all we ever had. — Maggie Stiefvater

But what was tragic about the girl was that she had not been born ugly. She might even have been a pretty child, and the grace proper to her age was still at odds with the repulsive premature aging induced by loose living and poverty. A trace of beauty still lingered in the sixteen-year-old face, like pale sunlight fading beneath the massed clouds of a winter's dawn. — Victor Hugo

They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover — Donna Tartt