Quotes & Sayings About Brown Leaves

Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown, and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. We think this frost-fire is a portent somehow: a promise that the continent has given us. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen. — Archibald MacLeish

Resurrection plants are usually tiny, no bigger than your fist. They are ugly and small and useless and special. When it rains, their leaves puff up but do not become green for forty-eight hours because it takes time for photosynthesis to start up. During those strange days of its reawakening the plant lives off of pure concentrated sugar, an intense sustained infusion of sweetness, a year's worth of sucrose coursing through its veins in just one day. This little plant has done the impossible: it has transcended the wilted brown of death. The miracle is not sustainable, of course, and within a day or two things will inevitably go back to normal. Such a crazy life takes its toll, and in the long term, even a resurrection plant withers and dies completely. But for a brief, glorious moment it knows something that no other plant has ever known: how to grow without being green. — Hope Jahren

Have you ever been in a large forest and seen a strange black tarn hidden deep among the leaves? It looks bewitched and a little frightening. All is still - fir trees and pines huddle close and silent on all sides. Sometimes the trees bend cautiously and shyly over the water as if they are wondering what may be hidden in the dark depths. There is another forest growing in the water, and it, too, is full of wonder and stillness. Strangest of all, never have the two forests been able to speak to each other.

By the edge of the pool and out in the water are soft tussocks covered with brown bear moss and wooly white cottongrass. All is so quiet - not a sound, not a flutter of life, not a trembling breath - all of nature seems to be holding its breath listening, listening with beating heart: soon, soon. — Helge Kjellin

Simon stayed where he was, a small brown image, concealed by the leaves.Even if he shut his eyes, the sow's head still remained like an after-image.The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business. — William Golding

He had not colored the leaves in yet, and the trunk and its branches looked for the moment less like a tree and more like a great brown river, the Nile, the Amazon, the Benedetto and Flynn river of blood, and there at its isthmus was this one child, so that it seemed that all of these people, from Poland, from Italy, from Ireland and the Bronx and Brooklyn, had come together for no other reason than to someday produce Robert Benedetto, in an event as meant, as important as that one in Bethlehem that he had learned about in catechism class at St. Stannie's. — Anna Quindlen

She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds. — Vladimir Nabokov

His entire aspect was menacing, starting with his chilling eyes and the pronounced bone structure of his face. He was tall and lean, but the skin on his arms was stretched over muscles that looked as taut as whipcord. The backs of his hands were bumpy with strong veins. His clothes and hair had snagged natural debris - twigs, sprigs of moss, small leaves. He seemed indifferent to all that, just as he did to the mud caked on his boots and the legs of his jeans. He smelled of the swamp, of sweat, of danger. — Sandra Brown

I grip him. "Don't leave me."
He kisses my lips, "Never again. This isn't me leaving you. This is me choosing you." He throws my words back at me.
He kisses me once more and then pushes off. He leaves and doesn't look back. I fight the urge to run after him. — Tara Brown

There used to be a rubbish heap under the great tree in Dhoby Ghaut with a sarabat stall parked next to it. It was a low, sprawling rubbish heap made up of the usual things - refuse from dustbins, paper, old tins and slippers and leaves from the tree above. Then one day, people forgot about it. They found a new dumping place and the old rubbish heap settled low on the ground. Time passed and its contents became warm and rich and fertile and people living in the area would take away potfuls of it to plant flowers in.

Somehow, a rose cutting, slim as a cheeping chicken's leg and almost brown, appeared on the rubbish heap one day. — Gregory Nalpon

I knew they weren't brown. I didn't know you were studying Light Manipulation. I'm impressed. But it takes concentration." He leans forward slowly until his mouth is inches from my ear. My eyes flutter and I know he heard the gasp of air I took no matter how quiet it was. "You got distracted," he whispers, then grabs his backpack from behind me and leaves. — Kasie West

The leaves that are green turn to brown. And they wither with the wind. And they crumble in your hand. — Paul Simon

But I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl is fire and autumn leaves. — Pierce Brown

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. — John Milton

And again she wished for Sherwood, and the dappled roof of leaves that never weighed upon her. She pulled her scarf closer around her and thought, I would rather live in a hut in the woods; a hut like the one of my first memories, with a clean-swept dirt floor, and a brown-eyed boy watching me from behind his mother's skirts as I watched him from behind mine. — Robin McKinley

A few brown leaves are stuck to the outside of the glass like leather tongues. — Margaret Atwood

Makes me sad looking at the leaves on my vines turning gold and brown, the branches bare of fruit, but I know the leaves and the fruit will return next spring once more.
But unlike lost love ,the love of writing,the love of nature ,the love of beauty,the love of life once its lost its lost forever, I hope i never ever lose that love. — Lou Silluzio

I stared at Greta's back. At her matted hair, decorated with brown torn leaves and dirt. What was happening to my sister? What if I'd never come? How long would she have stayed hidden in those cool, damp leaves? How long before she woke up alone and scared, with nothing but the howling of wolves to keep her company? — Carol Rifka Brunt

Leaves in every shade of the autumn spectrum - red, yellow, orange, brown - littered the ground at my feet, crunching beneath my boots as I stepped out of the car and looked around. — Kristi Cook

Leaves. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of them, brown and yellow and red and orange, in bright piles on the concrete floor. Some were so high they almost covered the rosebushes. — Alex Flinn

The days go by, through the brief silence of winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. — D.H. Lawrence

Don't under-rate the scope of your influence in your youth. Don't think you have all the time to make a difference in this world. Recognize that both brown and green leaves fall to the ground. — Nana Awere Damoah

Autumnal
nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day ... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it ... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses ... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth
reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke. — Tom Stoppard

A full moon, although less splendid than that earlier on,lit everything around. Before I reached the point where I would have to leave the road and set off across country, the narrow path I was following seemed suddenly to end and disappear behind a large hedge, and there before me, as if blocking my way, stood a single, tall tree, very dark at first against the transparently clear night sky. Out of nowhere, a breeze got up. It set the tender stems of the grasses shivering, made the green blades of the reeds shudder and sent a ripple across the brown waters of a puddle. Like a wave, it lifted up the spreading branches of the tree and, murmuring, climbed the trunk, and then, suddenly, the leaves turned their undersides to the moon and the whole beech tree (because it was a beech) was covered in white as far as the topmost branch.It was only a moment, no more than that, but the memory of it will last as long as my life lasts. — Jose Saramago

Loss leaves us empty- but learn not to close your heart and mind to grief. Allow life to replinish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible- but new — Pam Brown

Soon all the leaves would fall, leaving this spot bare and brown. I felt like I was looking at the pinnacle of a particularly dazzling firework as it filled the night sky, just before it lost its shape and faded into darkness. — Penny Reid

after centuries of observation scientists are still not exactly sure why the Amazon - unlike other forests, where leaves turn brown during the dry season - grows green and lush when the rain stops or how this reversed pattern of photosynthesis contributes to the broader seasonal distribution of water throughout the region. — Greg Grandin

It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart. Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe's beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer
large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.
"Who are you?" Meera Reed was asking.
Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest. — George R R Martin

After Max's outburst at lunchtime, he steered clear of me the rest of the day, and after school, I rode out to Freak Lake to think. The leaves had long passed the bright orange phase and faded into brown, and the grass on the side of the road was stiff and dead. — Dan Wells

Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil. — L.M. Montgomery

I remind myself, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host. — Brene Brown

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. — Marilynne Robinson

I meant to do my work today
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field
And all the leaves were calling me. — Richard Le Gallienne

I glanced up at the trees too.
Dead. Every one of them gray and white, needles rusted, leaves shriveled at the tips of branches. All the life sucked out of them. Not just the trees. All the plants, ferns, grasses and brush were shriveled, brown, barren.
As if a month of winter had set down right here in my driveway and gone on a killing spree.
...
"Love what you've done with the landscape," Cody said. "You could open your own business, you know."
...
"The hell you talking about, Miller?" I asked Cody.
"Yard care. You're poison and weed whacker all in one. You can call it Death to All Shrubbery. — Devon Monk

When autumn gusts blew in from the Rideau Lakes, parched brown leaves swirled and scattered around the sides of the neglected building, forming mounds like grave-markers, for ghosts of the past, who lingered on the dust-covered dance floor. — Arlene Stafford-Wilson

Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didnt feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spiders web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there in that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister and my mother and father and what would become of me. — Arthur Golden

Now you're going to get it," I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. "You should have been nice."
With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.
"Rachel Mariana Morgan!" he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. "I've come to save you, love! — Kim Harrison

When I was young
I wanted to be just like him.
One of the charm, of a bright orange smile
and muscular laughter.
Bold brown eyes flashing fearless
when he sat not alone
on cold blue nights
in empty boxcars.

Riding a freight train's
solitary wail
away from Nebraska
Depression, accompanying dreams
withered farms.
Nothing left but the
leaves of possibilities. — Larsen Bowker

The leaves of his albums were masterpieces. The colors! And the way in which they ranged across the page, each one a dab from the palette of a Turner. They began, of course, with the black issues of 1840. But soon the black warms to brown, the brown to red, the red to orange, the orange to bright carmine; on to indigo, and Venetian red - a bright blossoming of color, as if to paint the bursting into bloom of the Empire itself. There's glory for you! — Alan Bradley

In all things there is beauty. In the glint of dew clinging to the strands of a spider's web; in the way the setting sun winks off shards of broken glass; in the rainbow forming in the soap suds in a sink full of dirty dishes; in a blade of grass which manages to force its way, with patience and time, through the all too willing grasp of sidewalk cement. It is in the faded brown of leaves, turning, twisting against their fate, as they fall to the ground, light and dry as brittle bones, and in the bare, thin-tipped branches, denuded by a change in season. It is in the way a stranger's laughter cradles you if you let it. It is in the intricate scars of a lover's back and in our upturned eyes when we ask for forgiveness. — Marta Curti

On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice - the tone not of a lover but of a husband. — Matthew Pearl

The monster towered ten or twelve feet tall. Its bright green leathery skin was covered in dirt,
moss, leaves, and patches of grass, the stench repulsive. His teeth gleamed brown. Evidently he
wasn't aware of the multitude of whitening products on the market. — A&E Kirk

Isn't it strange some people make
You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
Like leaves all brown and dried!
But when you're with some other ones,
It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
All shiny in your mind! — Rachel Field

I thought about how the past can become so small. An entire day, 24 separate, heavy hours, becomes the size of a tiny brown leaf falling from a tree. Before you know it, a whole year is just a pile of dead leaves on the ground. The year or so I'd spent in love with Chad was starting to feel so long ago, swept away by the wind. I knew that this year would soon feel far away too. — Kimberly Novosel

Felicia had never seen such beads before, neither of glass nor of metal, not of jade either, she thought; of stone or baked clay, rather, opaque, in mysteriously tender and quenched colors: orange ocher, golden brown, some touched with black; so subdued of hue - melancholy almost, as if there was something of autumn in that little box woven from leaves, something of passing and dying. — Maria Dermout

When the leaves turn brown, I'll be wearing the batting crown — Dave Parker

Personally, I belong to the speedy school of golf. If it were left up to me, I would introduce a new rule that said every golf ball has to stay in motion from the moment it leaves the tee to the moment it plops into the hole, thus obliging each player to run along after his ball and give it another whack before it stops rolling. — Craig Brown

This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods. — Grace Paley

A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots. — Pierce Brown

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me. I am ready. — Sylvia Plath

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my
own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder,
mullein and poke-weed. — Walt Whitman

Autumn comes
like a buyer of cloth,
her long fingers
touching,
turning orange,
yellow, brown.

taking what she wants,
stretching
the bone taut air.

Her skin crackles beneath
our feet.

I didn't think anyone wanted me,

bruises pulled
like a sweater around
my neck.

We talk
in the pore tightening air,
branches bare,
about the girl buried in the chill
of prewinter.

We show each other
our mutilated children
in the guise of women
as autumn plucks
at our lips.

Each color,
blue, black, ochre
popping like kisses
on the rib lined flesh,
the puberty soft things.

And we muse
how women
keep bruises
hidden
beneath dead
leaves. — Janice Mirikitani

O'er hill and field October's glories fade;
O'er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly;
The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade,
Where naked branches make a fitful shade,
And the lost blooms of Autumn withered lie. — George Arnold

I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet ... the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs. — Jerome K. Jerome

Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either. — Rob Thurman

In the sunny flats, kudzu from last year had climbed to wrap trees and telephone poles in dry, brown leaves. Whole buildings looked as if they had been bagged. Introduced from Japan in the thirties to help control erosion that had damaged eighty-five percent of the tillable land, kudzu has consumed entire fields, and no one has found a good way to stop it. Kudzu and water hyacinth, another Japanese import, have run through Dixie showing less restraint than Sherman. — William Least Heat-Moon

Thank you to the crows that amass on Vancouver evenings and fly home to the darkness of Burnaby Mountain. Thank you to the brilliance of wet moss and lichen. Thank you to the rays of golden brown light slanting in the cool of a green lake. Thank you to the shoals of glinting fish. Thank you to the sweet gems of salmonberries. Thank you to the decaying leaves for their rich brown smell. Thank you to the slugs and wood lice beneath the leaves. Thank you to to my plant friends who keep me company as I write. I am deeply grateful to share this cycle with you. — Hiromi Goto

There is a certain shade of red brick
a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue
that is my childhood in St.Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It's also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel. — Harold Brodkey

Each of us thinks we are the most important person, because we are inside ourselves. Does this make sense? We see the world from our eyes and hear it with our ears. I look past the branches and leaves of the trees to the sky and I see the colors I call brown and green and blue. But think, Brian, are they the same colors that you see? We may call them by the same name, but they may look different to you. "The taste of an onion, the song of a bird, the strum of the harp, the grit of sand. I know what they feel like and taste like and sound like to me. But I can not know what they are to you. So how can I truly know your thoughts or feel your fears? "I can listen to you and comfort you, but only you can overcome your fears, only you can bring yourself into balance with ma'at. — Jerry Dubs

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence. — Pam Brown

He avoided stepping on the plants - though he wasn't sure why he bothered. The crops hardly seemed worth the effort. Wan, with wilted brown leaves, the plants seemed as depressed as the people who tended them. — Brandon Sanderson

As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, - its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, - we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light. — George MacDonald

All at once the hard, cold earth seemed to explode. The brown surface of the world dissolved and in its place was an impossible, an inconceivable, an unbelievable profusion of color: green grass and purple and red flowers; sprays of lily; white baby's breath that covered the hills; nodding fields of bright yellow daffodils; rich purple moss. The trees burst forth with new leaves. The weeping willow tree was a mass of tiny pale green leaves, thousands of them, which whispered and sighed together as the wind moved through its branches. There were fat heads of lettuce in the fields, and cucumbers lying like jewels among them, and enormous red tomatoes surrounded by thick, knotted vines.

And for the first time in 1,728 days, the clouds broke apart and there was dazzling blue sky, and light beyond what anyone could remember.

The sun had come out at last. — Lauren Oliver

true. I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let's think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow - that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It's incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it's scary and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved? — Brene Brown

Don't be fooled by the few red or brown leaves you find on poison ivy in the fall - the plant is not dying; it's just cheating with different pigments. — Hope Jahren

The forest rose about this open glade like an amphitheatre, in golden terraces of horsechestnut and beech. The big nuts dropped velvety and brown, as if they had been soaked in oil, and disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees, that had not been visible in the green of summer, stood out among the curly yellow brakes. Through the grey netting of the beech twigs, stiff holly bushes glittered. — Willa Cather

At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book ... I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ... So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison. — Rheta Childe Dorr

Victimhood gives us great moral superiority and entitles us to unquestioning sympathy while exempting us from examining any single one of our actions. A victim is utterly devoid of responsibility or blame. This of course leaves us vulnerable as we will carry on engaging in precisely the behaviour which provoked an unacceptable response. — Belinda Brown

Something lay in the middle of it a few yards on, a dark object like a little heap of brown leaves. Thinking it was leaves I saw no reason for comment; but Gertrud, whose eyes are very sharp, exclaimed. 'What, do you see August?' I cried. 'No, no - but there in the road - the tea-basket!' It was indeed the tea-basket, shaken out as it naturally would be on the removal of the bodies that had kept it in its place, come to us like the ravens of old to give us strength and sustenance. 'It still contains food,' said Gertrud, hurrying towards it. 'Thank heaven,' said I. We — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Lily knew what he meant. She loved places that people had forgotten, like the old gas station rotting on the edge of the forest in Pelt, all gray wood and brown metal. She liked to walk there sometimes and imagine that during tempests the king of the forest, dry leaves swirling around his motorcycle, would skid to a halt and demand unleaded gas from shadowy attendants while a mossy-faced knight sat in his sidecar. — M T Anderson

Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicked the brown leaves of autumn, and picked the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream; or rather it was like the simulacrum of reality. The oak leaves were to her like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or anything ... no touch, no contact! — D.H. Lawrence

about to knock again when the inside door is pulled open to reveal a sinewy woman dressed in what appears to be layers of old sweaters and an ankle-length denim skirt. Her long hair held back in an elastic that leaves the ends bunched and brittle as the head of a broom. Brown eyes wide and alive, — Andrew Pyper

Weave for the mighty chestnut
A tributary crown
Of autumn leaves, the brightest then
When autumn leaves are brown
Hang up his bridle on the wall,
His saddle on the tree,
Till time shall bring some racing king
Worthy to wear as he! — William Nack

It is Autumn, as you know, and things are beginning to die. It is so wonderful to be out in the crisp Fall air, with the leaves turning gold and the grass turning brown and the warmth going out of the sunlight and big hot fires in the fireplace while Buddy rakes the lawn. We see a lot of bombs on TV because we watch it a lot more, now that the days get shorter and shorter, and darkness comes so soon, and all the flowers die from freezing. — Hunter S. Thompson

Sere grass grew in tufts out of a pale, sandy soil, no richer for the thousands of souls planted there. Red-brown moss clumped amidst blankets of lichens of pale lavender-gray. Dark, twisted shrubs prickled rising above a knobby hillock, sharp, tiny leaves turning bronze or bright red and yellow with the advancing autumn. A wrought-iron gate guarded deep shadow inside a crypt, illustrated the silence of the grave, he thought. — Antonio Dias

I live by the simplest, perhaps facile command that Jesus ever gave, which is to love God with the whole self and the neighbor as the self, and I find that's entirely consuming. To do those two things leaves me very little time to do much else. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors. Clover, violets, and hedge roses breathe from their leaves; they are most lovable in cool lanes, along field paths, or upon stiles overhung by hawthorn, while the blackbird pipes, and the nightingale bathes its brown feathers in the twilight copse. — Robert Aris Willmott

He steps forward and kisses my forehead. His breath is soft, devastating warmth on my face. He turns and leaves. He chooses survival over me. It's no different than what I have done. We are both just trying so hard to survive me. — Tara Brown

Though the leaves fall from the trees like brown tears, for him everything must be as green as fresh grass, as white as May blossom, as if to convince us all that the seasons are upside down and we are all Tudors now. A — Philippa Gregory

He couldn't believe it!
He knew her intent before she dove for her sgian dubh. But he couldn't react quickly enough. He wasn't about to allow her to arm herself again. He dropped his sword, needing both hands free and lunged for her, only with his body this time. Tackling her, he took her down, her back cushioned by the wealth of leaves, and planted his body on top of hers.
She grew very still then, and he smiled a little at her. "If you had done just as I asked, we wouldna be like this, now would we lassie?"
Sorcha was fuming mad and scared witless as the braw Highlander pressed his body on top of hers. She felt his staff growing against her belly the longer he remained between her legs. He was beautiful, his dark brown eyes swimming with lust, his long brown hair hanging about her face as she looked up at him, panting for breath, trembling, despite wishing to show he didn't frighten her one bit. But he did. — Terry Spear

I think most people are motivated to want to do what is best for themselves. People want to avoid STDs. I believe in a system that leaves it up to the individual to protect their own health. — Chester Brown

In the woods, if you stopped, if you grew still, you'd hear a whole new set of sounds, wind rasping through silhouetted leaves and the cries and chatter of blue jays and brown thrashers and redbirds and sparrows, the calling of crows and hawks, squirrels barking, frogs burping, the far braying of dogs, armadillos snorkeling through dead leaves ... — Tom Franklin

Over the ten years since she'd been born, the trees of Briary Swamp, West Virginia, had peered through May's window night after night. They had watched over her thoughtful brown eyes, the imaginative crook of her head, the strong character of her knobby knees. The trees had laughed at the jokes May told her cat. Their leaves had whispered over her wild inventions, her colorful stories, her drawings. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Sunday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books ... books..books. — Betty Smith

In planning any type of offense, when a player leaves a spot always replace him with another offensive player. — Hubie Brown

Books were everywhere, lined neatly on shelves that went from floor to ceiling. The ceiling was two stories high, with an upper balcony that provided access to a second-floor gallery. The dazzling array f red, gold, green, and brown bindings was a feast for the eyes, while the wonderful smells of vellum, parchment, and pungent leather almost caused Amanda to salivate. An exquisite waft of tea leaves lingered in the air. For anyone who enjoyed the pursuit of reading, this place surely was paradise. — Lisa Kleypas

The Lost Girls

Nomad girls are Lost Ones too,
With leaves at foot and crown;
They too seek shelter in the tress,
Drink Red and Gold and Brown.

Their circlets made of steam and rain,
Their lashes powdered ash,
They're firelight, they're fox's kill,
They're blood and sweat and scratch.

Lost Boys fly forever, and crow the rising sun.
They play all day in Neverland, their laughter mermaid-spun.
But Lost Girls live underground:
They steal from hole to hole.
They drink the shadows, wear the night,
And paint their cheeks with coal.

And when the wind turns colder,
They split a doe and climb inside.
Still-warm sinew wraps their hands,
Dead muscle soaks the light.

You'll never tell what's girl, what's beast,
Once bloody fur's been trussed-
So think your happy thoughts, Lost Boy,
Wish on your Fairy Dust. — Lauren Bird Horowitz

Put a love note in his shaving kit before he leaves on a business trip. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you'll understand the song: In Autumn, when the leaves are brown, Take pen and ink, and write it down. — Lewis Carroll

The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose red. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly agains the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence: when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away. — Ken Kesey