Middle Of Winter Quotes & Sayings

He described to her the house he had built for himself, in outside appearance a shack, but delightful inside, at least to him. A sleeping loft with a little round window. Everything he needed right where he could put his hand to it, out in the open, nothing in cupboards. A short walk from the house he had a bathtub sunk in the earth, in the middle of a bed of sweet herbs. He would carry hot water to it by the pailful and lounge there under the stars, even in the winter. He grew vegetables, and shared them with the deer.
(From the story "Powers") — Alice Munro

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. — Jonathan Safran Foer

In the middle of Winter I discovered within myself an invincible Summer. — Albert Camus

I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter. — Joseph Addison

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. — F Scott Fitzgerald

i gut fruit with my mouth
push tongue into black belly of papaya
peel lychee with teeth
bite into ripe pear
suck on stone of mango
all of this, over the kitchen sink
barefoot
middle of winter
sticky hands pushing hair away from face
moaning into sweet flesh
the whole time
your name flat against the roof of my mouth. — Warsan Shire

The way to get a deciduous hedge for free is to ask a neighbor to let you take divisions from his shrubs. You can take ten or twenty sucker-like shoots with their roots attached before he will notice and start to feel like a sucker himself. Thank him profusely and suggest that you'd love to have him and the wife over to dinner sometime, but don't give a specific date. Perhaps in the winter, you might suggest, when there's not so much work to do in the yard.
... in about three to five years the little suckers will grow into an informal hedge whose height will depend on the type of shrub you have selected. I know three to five years is a long time when you're middle-aged and older. But what do you want? You've just glommed several hundred dollars' worth of shrubs for free, for heaven's sake. In three to five years your neighbor will have forgotten about that dinner, also. — Cassandra Danz

My granny would come out and stay with us in the winter, and we would listen to the reports from the coastal stations and have a discussion in the middle of Glasgow about what the weather was like in Tiree. — Johann Lamont

I'm a very big fan of winter-flowering shrubs and bulbs. You have the smell, you have the color - it's really like a present from God when something like that is in flower in the middle of the snow. — Dries Van Noten

To those Romans December twenty-fifth was the birthday of the sun. They wrote that in gold letters in their calendar. Every year about that time, the middle of winter, the sun was born once more and it was going to put an end to the darkness and misery of winter. So they had a great feast, with presents and dolls for everybody, and the best day of all was December twenty-fifth. That feast, they would tell you, was thousands of years old- before Christ was ever heard of. — John G. Jackson

Like a sudden thaw in the middle of winter, grace happens at unexpected moments. It stops us short, catches the breath, disarms. If we manipulate it, try to control it, somehow earn it, that would not be grace. Yet not everyone has tasted of that amazing grace, and not everyone believes in it. — Philip Yancey

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don't know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them. — Andrea Gibson

The people ... " Winter whispered. "Are going to die," the man said, watching coldly. "It's a shame; I didn't mean for it to get quite that out of control. I let my anger get away from me. I had intended to scorch the ground around us, leave you in the middle of a smoking crater, but when people interfere with me, when they try to shake me down, take what's mine, it makes me ... so angry." Winter watched the scorched ground as the black smoke started to rise. The man shook him, diverting Winter's attention back to him. "Listen to me. — Robert J. Crane

I guess I was lucky I didn't drown, or smother in the thick, black, icy mud that the river left behind in its slow withdrawal back within its banks.

I didn't feel lucky.

When I regained consciousness, my head and ribs winning the battle with the rest of my body for sharp, almost unbearable pain, my first thought was Chrissy. Chrissy, pulled away from me by the merciless power of the water. Chrissy, lost somewhere, maybe injured, calling for me and I wasn't there for her. Chrissy, beautiful, wonderful Chrissy, quite probably lying in the mud, dead!

My scream of anguish, of pain and loss, echoed through the empty Liverpool streets. There was no shame or embarrassment in that shout, that bellow of emotion. I had lost the woman I loved. Nothing I'd ever felt compared to the agony, the gut-wrenching loss of that moment.

I cried. I sat there in the middle of a street I didn't recognise, not knowing how far the wave had carried me, and cried. — Neil Davies

Helen's books were her friends, "the kind you invite for dinner in the middle of winter," she'd told him, " and spend all night talking and never go to bed. — Emma Clayton

It always depresses me when people moan about how commercial Christmas is. I love everything about it. The tradition of having this great big feast, slap bang in the middle of winter, is an essential thing to look forward to at the end of the year. — Richard E. Grant

Sometimes it felt like she was still in the middle of a conversation with him, that they'd only paused for a beat; that this was nothing more than the space between musical notes, the timeout on a playing field, the long, slumbering winter before an inevitable spring. — Jennifer E. Smith

It's a sun lamp. I thought you might be tired of your pasty-pale complexion. (Chris)
Christopher, I happen to be a Viking in the middle of winter in Minnesota. Lack of a deep tan goes with the whole Nordic territory. Why do you think we raided Europe anyway? (Wulf)
Because it was there? (Chris)
No, we wanted to thaw out. (Wulf) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

As she reached back for the buckle, her fingers met Mr. Meisner's. She jumped. "I can do this ... Sir."
"Ah." He brushed aside her fingers. "I see you've at least remembered the sir."
"One always calls gentlemen that, just as you
"
With only a rustle of cloth to warn her, his teeth met in the lobe of her ear, sending a spark into her middle. Like the melt of winter snow, she felt heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers curled against her collarbone where her hands still rested either side of her neck.
"I'm not a gentleman, Faith. — Cari Silverwood

When a woman gets married it is like jumping into a hole in the ice in the middle of winter: you do it once and you remember it the rest of your days. — Maxim Gorky

Identity, though, is a difficult matter to tease out, especially in a time of flux. How to tell a spaniel from a retriever when all dogs have become middle-sized and brown? Should we go by some arbitrary blood quantum wherein half makes an Indian and forty-nine percent makes something else? Certainly forty-nine percent does not a whiteman make, at least not by the laws then prevailing in our state and most others. Or do we go by the old ways, the clans and the mothers, blood degree be damned? Or by what language someone dreams in or prays in or curses in? Or whether they cook bean bread and still tell the tales of Spearfinger and Uktena by the winter fire and go to water when they're sick? And what if they did all those things but were blond and square-headed as Norsemen? Or do we just hold a dry oak leaf to their cheeks and cull by whether they are darker or lighter? — Charles Frazier

Sometimes I go outside after a long stretch of writing and I'm surprised it's not raining. Or that it's daylight. Or that it's not the middle of winter. I don't know if that level of immersion is normal, but it's now I do things. I like it. It works well for me. — Patrick Rothfuss

globalization and air transport mean that we are now exposed to a previously unheard-of overabundance of fruit. Pineapples from the tropics nestle on our supermarket shelves in the middle of winter, next to fresh strawberries from Mexico, and some dried figs from Morocco. So, what we label a food intolerance may in fact be nothing more than the reaction of a healthy body as it tries to adapt within a single generation to a food situation that was completely unknown during the millions of years of our evolution. — Giulia Enders

Although it was the middle of winter, I finally realized that, within me, summer was inextinguishable. — Albert Camus

It was in 1590
winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. — Mark Twain

Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter. — Honore De Balzac

Autumn

Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death,
beside its dying sacrificial fire;
the dim world's middle-age of vain desire
is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath
that speaks the winter's welcome malison
to fix it in the unremembering sleep:
the silent woods brood o'er an anxious deep,
and in the faded sorrow of the sun,
I see my dreams' dead colours, one by one,
forth-conjur'd from their smouldering palaces,
fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year.
They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep,
discrown'd belated dreams! but in the drear
and lingering world we sit among the trees
and bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth,
looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear
sad splendour of the winter of the far south.


Christopher John Brennan — Christopher John Brennan

A merchant, who had three daughters, was once setting out upon a journey; but before he went he asked each daughter what gift he should bring back for her. The eldest wished for pearls; the second for jewels; but the third, who was called Lily, said, 'Dear father, bring me a rose.' Now it was no easy task to find a rose, for it was the middle of winter; yet as she was his prettiest daughter, and was very fond of flowers, her father said he would try what he could do. So he kissed all three, and bid them goodbye. — Jacob Grimm

It's different and bold. It stands out amongst a blank world of black, white, and gray. Orange is the early morning sun stretching across the sky and the color of a burning ember standing tall in the middle of a beach bonfire. It's leaves in the fall, carrots in Nana's vegetable soup on a cold winter day, tulips in the spring, and the ladybugs in the middle of the grassy park on a hot summer afternoon. Orange is life. It's unexpected but beautiful. — Aly Martinez

There are moments in the middle of winter when all seems lost, and the darkness presses in like death, and everthing is cold, and I wake in the night shivering, and relive all I went through then. — Jonathan Aycliffe

Amber, you could never embarrass me."
"Never?" she asked.
"Never."
"One time, I yelled across the store to Mom and asked her if she wanted the regular or the super-absorbent tampons. I added that, according to the box, the super-absorbent were for those heavy days. Then I asked her to rate her heaviness on a scale of one to ten."
"Okay, you could."
"Then while we were standing in line, I asked her why she was buying three boxes of Summer's Eve in the middle of winter."
I set her at arm's length. "Wow."
"I know, right? I had no idea a person could turn so red. — Darynda Jones

Cities are natural, that's why they're everywhere. It's not like there's only one city, and everybody's like 'What the f**k is this?' No, cities are all over the place. They're natural. You know what's not natural? You, in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of the winter. — Joe Rogan

We plowed through Chaucer, and I learned to assist her using the Middle English dictionary. One year we spent the winter painstakingly noting each instance of symbolism within Pilgrim's Progress on separate recipe cards, and I was delighted to see our pile grow to be thicker than the book itself. She set her hair in curlers while listening to records of Carl Sandburg's poems over and over, and instructed me on how to hear the words differently each time. After discovering Susan Sontag, she explained to me that even meaning itself is a constructed concept, and I learned how to nod and pretend to understand. My — Hope Jahren

Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack. — Kat Richardson

If you asked most kids, "Hey, you want to summon fire or lightning or magical makeup?" they'd think it sounded pretty cool. But those powers went along with hard stuff, like sitting in a sewer in the middle of winter, running from monsters, losing your memory, watching your friends almost get cooked, and having dreams that warned you of your own death. — Rick Riordan

The seasons come and go, summer follows spring and fall follows summer and winter follows fall, and human beings are born and mature, have their middle age, begin to grow older and die, and everything has its cycles. Day follows night, night follows day. It is good to be part of all of this.' When you begin to have that kind of trust in basic creativity and directness and fullness, in the alive quality of yourself and your world, then you can begin to understand renunciation. — Pema Chodron

Sometimes she wondered if she only loved him when it was cold, in the middle of winter when everything was dead. - — Brit Bennett

A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret.
Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.
"Who is that man?" she asked, tremendously affected by his expression.
"The curator of the Hermitage."
"Why is he looking at the crates that way?"
Alexander said, "They are his life's sole passion. He doesn't know if he is ever going to see them again. — Paullina Simons

In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keen blue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk
it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love
I saw Maggie's black hair in this night
In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. — Jack Kerouac

Everybody thought that Titanic was the most romantic movie ever. A story about two teenagers who knew each other for three days. Try to make that movie with a couple that's been together for a few years. 'Get in the goddamn boat, Rose!' 'I don't wanna get in the boat!' 'Get in, come on, I'm freezing my ass off out here! I wanted to go to Jamaica, but no, we had to go on a cruise in the middle of the winter!' 'You never draw me naked anymore' — Greg Giraldo

Ella is much younger. Maybe thirty. I don't know. And you certainly can't tell from the way she dresses. Middle of winter she finds a way to show her belly button. And she's got four hundred of these little elastic bands that can only pass for a skirt if you never move your legs. Top that with this unbelievable iridescent red hair and you've got one hot seventeen-year-old. At least that's what she thinks. — Francine Pascal

In the middle of L.A.'s sunny non-winter, I need to sit in a dark closet to feel right. — Gayle Forman

Tell me again why you have barbecues in the middle of winter, bro?"
Nate looked at him like he was an idiot. "We like steak. — Pamela Clare

The school year started in September, with a long vacation in the winter, not the summer, due to the difficulty of keeping the schools warm in North Korea's harsh winters. My kindergarten had a large wood-burning stove in the middle of the classroom and walls painted with colourful scenes of children performing gymnastics, children in uniform, and of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling a Yankee, a Japanese and a South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet. — Hyeonseo Lee

We see people in the Middle East begin to have dreams of new Ottoman Empire where everyone will be subjected to some of what we've seen happen in those countries where we helped bring about an Arab Spring that's turned into a Winter Nightmare. — Louie Gohmert

But me, maybe I fit in a place like this. Maybe the cold inside of me will seem less cold in this winter. Maybe the tall buildings will make the brick walls I build for myself seem smaller. Maybe the noises in my head will quiet down in the middle of all the other noises. Or maybe my cold and walls and noise will get worse. — Francesca Lia Block

Somehow you made trudging through the wilderness in the middle of winter with a soul-sucking demon and a soul-sucked would-be murderer seem not so terrible. "But — Emily Croy Barker

Swimming is my salvation. Ask me in the middle of winter, or at the end of a grueling day, or after a long stretch at the computer, where I'd most like to be, and the answer is always the same: in the water, gliding weightless, slicing a silent trail through whatever patch of blue I can find. — Lynn Sherr

I spend a lot of time just listening to the ospreys. I watch them go through their life cycle. They spend the winter in South America. The mother and father osprey stay together. It's a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children. They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter - the mother and father ... — Alan Lightman

A low, angry growl hit Jatred's ears like a hammer. He turned and saw a massive figure crashing its way through the snow. Although he'd only seen the drawings of the Winter monsters, he knew it was a Garhanan. There was nothing pleasing in the way the creature looked, smelled, or sounded. Even its movements were horrid. A flat nose sat in the middle of the meaty face. The Garhanan's bushy white brows stuck out, shading small beady eyes. Its arms were muscular and swung down past its strong knees. The back, chest, and thighs were colossal too. The beast's whole body was covered in white, sparse, long fur.
"Great," Jatred snarled, his jaws clenching. He tried not to show how much Garhanan scared him. — A.O. Peart

A man with a warm heart is no different than a warm house in the middle of a bitter winter! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It was only sometimes, when a spring day came in the middle of winter, that one had a sudden feeling that nothing was really impossible — Barbara Pym

If the Mob was after you, the last thing you felt was alive. If the Mob was after you, it was only a matter of time before you were as dead as a doorknob. But standing outside in the middle of winter, with the world in a coma, she felt alive. — Chrys Fey

One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter. — Henry David Thoreau

Daft Punk and I belong to the Generation 75. We were born in 1975, so we are somewhat in the middle of the rebellion and freedom of the 70s and the consumer culture of the 80s. — Pedro Winter

I get a good colour in summer but go really pale in winter, and it genuinely doesn't suit me, as people ask me if I'm ill. As well as making me look a bit better, I often have to be tanned in the middle of winter to do a show or programme, so I've road-tested every fake tan on the market. — Deirdre O'Kane

Once upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat at a window sewing, and the frame of the window — Jacob Grimm