So Over Winter Quotes & Sayings

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens. — Henry David Thoreau

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

The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can't help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of animal attack or injury. Just toppled over one night with ice working into their lungs. You wouldn't want to stand outside for more than a few minutes in that kind of weather. If you lived through only one of those winters the way this elk has, you would write books about it. You would become a shaman. You would be forever changed. That elk from the winter stands there on the summer evening, watching from beside the forest. It keeps its story to itself. — Craig Childs

Jaenelle leaned over the narrow window seat, gulping in the winter air. "It hurts so much to live here, Daemon," she whimpered as he cradled her in his arms. "Sometimes it hurts so much."
"Shh." He stroked her hair. "Shh. — Anne Bishop

I despised myself for my weakness. I may have dreamed all my youth of life as a horse-trader like my father; I may have railed against my conscription and loathed the legions on principle, but even so, every morning in this place I cursed my lack of valour and every night, when I slept, my traitorous
mind brought me dreams drenched in the blood of our enemies as my comrades in the Vth launched themselves into battle, taking risks, winning glory, rising in the ranks, killing the enemy and so becoming men ... all without my being there.
The fact that it was winter, when the weather forced a kind of peace on both sides, and that my comrades were currently enduring endless forced marches over the mountains in western Armenia because their general had deemed them unfit for battle, did nothing to hamper my fantasies. — M.C. Scott

Late Hours
On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, and occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.
In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.
What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives. — Lisel Mueller

I think of winter, which is nothing but a rift in the firmament through which the winds break loose, the shreds of cloud over the hilltops in the new blue of the morning
and dew-drops, those false pearls, and frost, that beauty powder, and mankind in disarray and events out of joint, and so many spots on the sun and so many craters in the moon and so much wretchedness everywhere
when I think of all this I can't help feeling that God is not rich. He has the appearance of riches, certainly, but I can feel his embarrassment. He gives us a revolution the way a bankrupt merchant gives a ball. We must not judge any god by appearances. I see a shoddy universe beyond that splendour of the sky. Creation itself is bankrupt, and that's why I'm a malcontent. — Victor Hugo

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

And then, without any warning at all, he presses his lips against mine.
As his mouth covers my own, I find myself reeling, as if I have been tipped backward and am falling, falling, so that even the stars in the sky are spinning. His lips are warm and soft, the unrelenting pull of his desire for me as strong as the pull of the waves against the sand.
It is not like practicing with Ismae, or even Sybella. It is not like any of the first kisses I have imagined over the years. It is far, far better and more wondrous, and yet terrifying as well, like one of the raging storms that pound against the convent walls in the winter, threatening to breach its defenses. So too does this kiss threaten something deep within me that I cannot even name. — Robin LaFevers

Flurries early, pristine and pearly. Winter's come calling! Can we endure so premature a falling? Some may find this trend distressing- others bend to say a blessing over sage and onion dressing. — Old Farmer's Almanac

Storm Warning
Something not the wind shakes along far
like a sky truck in low gear
over Oregon. Like the shore wind baying along through fir
but not now the wind, no, not really so,
it is a new weight and force
that begins to blow.
This winter they'll still call it wind and let it explore;
and when they talk it over next summer there by the shore,
along through the scrub and salal the new something will range.
In a hurry, late, it won't wait for the air.
In the fall again they'll remember, each of them, back to now.
They'll no longer call it wind, they'll want it all changed.
They'll want it all different then, but they won't know how. — William Stafford

I say at the very end of "Winter Journal" that I do dream about my father often. I think I have a tremendous compassion for him, which has grown over the years. A certain kind of pity for him also in that he was so unrealised as a human being, so dogged, and so shut-off from people in many ways. You know, I've been writing another book, and it's another non-fiction autobiographical work, kind of a compliment to "Winter Journal", and it's just finished. — Paul Auster

According to the calendar, it's spring. So why am I still freezing?
Because your blood has thinned over winter. It'll take a while before you're no longer a freeze-baby — Mary Ellis

My loneliness ... still comes over me sometimes ... It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing. — Marco Roth

A great tree develops over time and can tell stories not only those of happiness, but also those that contain pain from what it has seen over the years, and as a result is the wise ancient tree that it is today. As the seasons change, the tree naturally goes through changes as well: where the leaves turn yellow and orange in the fall, falling by the Winter, returning in the Spring, and with full set of new leafs by the Summer. Love is no different in that there will be times when we are fully naked in the Winter, and left to wonder about Spring when it seemed so easy to love, yet the wise tree knows that no winter will last forever no matter how cold it may be. — Forrest Curran

I've got spider veins all over my legs, so I wear opaque tights all winter. All sorts of colours. — Sally Phillips

Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the colour of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which - though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off - the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations ... so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. Is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all Chelsea? As a spell, against falling objects ... — Thomas Pynchon

I Won't Fly Today

Too much to do, despite the snow,

which made all local schools close

their doors. What a winter! Usually,

I love watching the white stuff fall.

But after a month with only short

respites, I keep hoping for a critical

blue sky. Instead, amazing waves

of silvery clouds sweep over the crest

of the Sierra, open their obese

bellies, and release foot upon foot

of crisp new powder. The ski

resorts would be happy, except

the roads are so hard to travel

that people are staying home.

So it kind of boggles the mind

that three guys are laying carpet

in the living room. Just goes to

show the power of money. In less

than an hour, the stain Conner left

on the hardwood will be a ghost. — Ellen Hopkins

Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them. — Silas House

But it's so beautiful, my castle; it's the most wonderful place to go home to. It sits on a cliff above the sea. There are steps down to the water, cut into the cliff. And balconies hanging over the cliff - you feel as if you'll fall if you lean too far. At night the sun goes down across the water, and the whole sky turns red and orange, and the sea to match it. Sometimes there are great fish out there, fish of impossible colors. They come to the surface and roll about - you can watch them from the balconies. And in winter the waves are high, and the wind'll knock you down. You can't go out to the balconies in winter. It's dangerous, and wild. — Kristin Cashore

As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon. — Nick Hornby

Sir?"
"Yes"
"Where do you go at night?"
Winter paused and glanced over his shoulder. Joseph was watching him with perceptive eyes for one so young.
In that instant, Winter grew tired of lies. "I right wrongs."
He expect more questions
Joseph was usually full of them and his answer was too obscure
but the boy merely nodded. "Will you teach me how sometime?"
Winter's eyes widened. Teach him to ... ? His mind instantly balked at the thought of putting Joseph in danger. But were he ever to ask for an apprentice to his Ghost, he knew instinctively that he could find no one with more courage than the lad. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Even so, [ ... in the silence after a winter storm has ceased to howl, in the soft whisper of a morning snowfall, in the way the moonlight sparkles over new-fallen snow, you can feel when she has been near by, ever searching. You can sense the presence of the Winter Child. — Cameron Dokey

She remembered perching on the sill of her bedroom window with the pane opened a crack so she could let the winter in, and she remembered letting it sting her nose and wash over her until she was shivering and blue. — Meagan Spooner

Short boots are cool, in my humble opinion. They say, 'Hey! Winter is over, but summer hasn't yet arrived - so enjoy this halfway point!' — Rachel Nichols

When the child separates from its parents to explore the new world, the parents can do one of two things. They can fight it with rules, pleading, tears and anger: 'Why do you want to go out in minus-fifteen-degree temperatures in that T-shirt when you could wear the wool I've warmed for you over the woodstove? It's so cosy.' Or they can admit the new world exists, dangerous and irresistible. Cosy is not what awakening youth wants Safety is not what it wants. — Kathleen Winter

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. — Masanobu Fukuoka

Trying to build a team over the course of the winter to put on the field is really just half the job. Because if your best players go down, it's not so much him going down as who you replace him with, which ultimately might have the biggest impact on how you end up finishing. So you want to have both a belt and suspenders for support. — Billy Beane

I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those — Erich Maria Remarque

TESLA'S CAT
[Nikola Tesla's favorite childhood companion] was the family's black cat, Macak. Macak followed young Nikola everywhere, and they spent many happy hours rolling on the grass.

It was Macak the cat who introduced Tesla to electricity on a dry winter evening. "As I stroked Macak's back," he recalled, "I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak's back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house." Curious, he asked his father what caused the sparks. Puzzled at first, [his father] finally answered, "Well, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in a storm." His father's answer, equating the sparks with lightning, fascinated the young boy. As Tesla continued to stroke Macak, he began to wonder, "Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God," he concluded. — W. Bernard Carlson

There were nights when I got nothing, [but] I still played. With no one to hear me and no one to pay me, and it did not matter.
On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They slipped over my tongue and spilled from my mouth. And because of them I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king.
It was dark and it was cold on those nights. The world was harsh and I was hungry. Yet I had such joy from the words. Such joy.
There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.
The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.
Be careful what you show the world.
You never know when the wolf is watching. — Jennifer Donnelly

I'm going to build that house with my own hands, from the foundation to the roof. I'm going to do it for us, and I'm going to do it right, so it lasts forever. Can't go raising walls on a shaky foundation. Can't go slapping thatch over rafters so thin, they'll topple with the first winter storm. Do you know?"
She nodded. "I know."
He reached for her hand. "It's the same with us. I mean to build something with you. Something that will last. Much as I want you, I don't want to rush and bollocks it up. — Tessa Dare

Like most scavengers, Sunil knew how he appeared to the people who frequented the airport: shoeless, unclean, pathetic. By winter's end, he had defended against this imagined contempt by developing a rangy, loose-hipped stride for exclusive use on Airport Road. It was the walk of a boy on his way to school, taking his time, eating air. His trash sack was empty on this first leg of his daily route, so it could be tucked under his arm or worn over his shoulders like a superhero cape. When Sister Paulette passed by in her chauffeured white van, it could be draped over his head. Sister Paulette-Toilet was how he thought of her now. He imagined her riding down Airport Road looking for children more promising than he. — Katherine Boo

After living in LA for 8 years, I sort of wanted a change, but there's not much production in New York, which is where I primarily live, so I just sort of drifted over to London. — Alex Winter

You know, I couldn't imagine living somewhere without seasons."
Yeah?"
Real seasons, I mean. I'd miss the changes, the variety. Especially spring. I couldn't live without spring. Days like today are worth every snowstorm and slush puddle. By March, it seems like winter will never end. All that snow and ice that seemed so wonderful in December is driving you crazy. But you know spring's coming. Every year, you wait for that first warm day, then the next and the next, each better than the last. You can't help but be happy. You forget winter and get the chance to start over. Fresh possibilities."
A fresh start. — Kelley Armstrong

N. Martinez: Wildfires. That' why it smells so smoky. We had a dry winter, so the brush is like kindling
Eve: Are they different from regular fires?
N. Martinez: They're more unpredictable. They leap from one object to another, so it's hard to guess at their path or limit their destruction. Outside the city, they can roll over the landscape like a wave and hit you before you know it.
Eve: How do you stop them?
N. Martinez: You can't. Once they start, they choose their own path. All you can do is try to contain them until they burn themselves out. They're beautiful to watch, but they can be dangerous. — Michele Jaffe

All right, beautiful. You've got me tied down to this stone table, and there's a knife in your hand that says you get to rule Narnia for another hundred years. So maybe I die, and winter goes on. Maybe the hunger and the darkness and the fear never end. But as long as the children believe in me, I know that Aslan will live again. I, the Great Lion, Son of The Emperor Over The Sea, will live again and
aaaaauugh!! — C.S. Lewis

There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,' Harry recounted.
'He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted "buttfucker" then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I've always wondered why I hated him so much.'
'People are afraid of what they don't understand. And hate what they're afraid of. — Jo Nesbo

She was trembling, and so was he. Like the first time, he thought. For her. For him. And just as
terrifying and tremendous.
The late winter sun was a white wash of light through the windows. In the silence of the house he
could hear every catch of her breath. When he skimmed his fingers lightly over her, she was all soft
skin and quivers.
Smooth. Warm. Beautiful. — Nora Roberts

Winter glanced over at Cirrus again and found him glaring at Moon and Kinkajou with an expression of searing hatred, so intense that Winter wanted to run across the clearing and fling up his wings to shield Moon from it. — Tui T. Sutherland

Popcorn-can cover / screwed to the wall / over a hole / so the cold / can't mouse in. — Lorine Niedecker

Watch now," Handful told her. "This rabbit goes under the log, and this rabbit goes over the log. You make them hop like that all the way down. See, that's how you make a plait - hop over, hop under." Nina took possession of the rabbits and the log and created a remarkably passable braid. Handful and I oohed and ahhed as if she'd carved a Florentine statue. It was a winter evening like so many others that passed in quiet predictability: the room flushed with lamplight, a fire nesting on the grate, an early dark flattening against the windows, while my two companions fussed over me at the dresser. — Sue Monk Kidd

I could either wait it out or pack my bags, but I could't force a confrontation with a man who refused to be confronted. So I did what a lot of women do: I kept my head in the sand. And I waited for winter to be over. — Christina Bartolomeo

During winter sunsets, standing on a promontory so I saw the scenic sea as a surface rather than a line and, as coal-boats appeared from all sides of the horizon, I thought that, as they opened their portholes, they would throw their coals onto this fire. They swarmed over the ocean like blowflies ready to devour the decomposed star, and the blank gesture of a cloud fanned them. — Georges Limbour

Growing up in a place that has winter, you learn to avoid self-pity. Winter is not a personal experience, everybody else is just as cold as you, so you shouldn't complain about it too much. You learn this as a kid, coming home crying from the cold, and Mother looks down and says, 'It's only a little frostbite. You're okay.' And thus you learn to be okay. What's done is done. Get over it. Drink your coffee. It's not the best you'll ever get but it's good enough. — Garrison Keillor

Why do you continue your... charade? Your current position would seem to be a good one for revealing the truth'.
'A few people know, sir. Bobby, Jane, some of the Leatherbacks. For the rest... it just seems easier to keep things as they are.' Winter thought of Novus and his tirade. 'It would be one thing if I had just joined up, but it's been so long. People might be upset that they'd been fooled. And...'
Janus raised an eyebrow. Winter hesitated.
'It's all right for the Girl's Own,' she said. 'They joined up because Vordan needs them, and when the war's over they'll go home. I... I haven't anywhere to go.' She tugged the collar of her uniform. 'This is who I am now, for better or worse. This is my home. After the war, maybe it will be all right for a woman to keep this on, but... maybe not.'
Winter found her throat getting thick. She'd never put it that way before, never even thought it so bluntly. This is my home. — Django Wexler

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere! — T. S. Eliot

Andras Riedlmayer described a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to burn their books for heat and cooking. 'This forces one to think critically,' Riedlmayer remembered his friend saying. 'One must prioritize. First you burn old college textbooks, which you haven't read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?' I asked Riedlmayer if his friend had any books left when the war was over. 'Oh yes,' he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. 'He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry. — Matthew Battles

Late Echo"

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day. — John Ashbery

He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor's boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on. — Douglas Adams

Tsukuru's mind grew still and tranquil. A quiet feeling, like a frozen tree on a windless winter night. But there was little pain mixed in. Over the years Tsukuru had grown used to this mental image, so much so that it no longer brought him any particular pain. — Haruki Murakami

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

Every morning Papa brought in another pile of firewood and vines from the apple tree. Mama said they should keep busy knitting Papa's Christmas presents. Josie finished Papa's scarf and made one for Mama too. Katrina worked on Mama's pincushion, but she just couldn't concentrate on knitting Papa's socks while he sawed and hacked away at the apple tree. She had ripped out the heel and started over so many times that she had all but ruined the yarn from Mrs. Wooly.
"Well, I'll miss the old apple tree," said Mama, "but it will keep us warm this long winter."
"Yes, I'm thankful for the firewood," said Papa.
How could he be thankful, thought Katrina. Didn't he know that he was chopping up her studio? Didn't he know he was ruining her drawing board? Didn't he know she couldn't draw unless she were in the apple tree? — Trinka Hakes Noble

Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there.
Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice. — Shan Sa

The two forces met with a fearful din of spears and bossed shields, clashing in a fierce and furious melees of bronze-breasted fighters. And there the screams of the dying were mingled with cries of triumph s blood flowed over the earth. As when two winter torrents flow down from great mountain springs to mingle their turbulent floods; where the two streams meet and thunder on down a deep gorge, and the shepherd far off in the mountains hears the roar, so now as the two armies clashed in the fury of battle a terrible roar of toil and shouting arose. — Homer

And by God, what a day! You know the kind of day that generally comes some time in March when winter suddenly seems to give up fighting. For days past we'd been having the kind of beastly weather that people call "bright" weather, when the sky's a cold hard blue and the wind scrapes you like a blunt razor-blade. Then suddenly the wind had dropped and the sun got a chance. You know the kind of day. Pale yellow sunshine, not a leaf stirring, a touch of mist in the far distances where you could see the sheep scattered over the hillsides like lumps of chalk. And down in the valleys fires were burning, and the smoke twisted slowly upwards and melted into the mist. I'd got the road to myself. It was so warm you could almost have taken your clothes off. — George Orwell

And you think journeying abroad will give you this knowledge you crave?
I think it will contribute to my understanding of the world, of people.
More so than say, the old lady who has lived in the same house her entire life, who has borne children both alive and dead? Who tends her soil; who sees the sun shine and the rain fall over the land, winter, spring, summer and autumn? What might you say to the idea that we all have a capacity for wisdom, just as a jug has room for a finite amount of water-pouring more water in the jug doesn't increase that capacity. — Jacqueline Winspear

The rainy winter days passed quickly. Thanksgiving came and not long afterward Christmas vacation. Ramona missed Daisy, who went with her family to visit her grandparents. When she returned, the girls spent an afternoon dressing up Roberta in the clothes she had received for Christmas. Roberta was agreeable to having a dress pulled over her head, her arms stuffed into a sweater, her head shoved into caps. She enjoyed the girls' admiration. She was not so happy about a pair of crocheted slippers with ears and tails that looked like rabbits, a gift from Howie's grandmother, who enjoyed crocheting. Roberta did not care for the slippers. — Beverly Cleary

How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile.
I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose.
"It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow."
"Where do the lead?"
"To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."
I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall.
"Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her. — Haruki Murakami

Slow. And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind Over the stubble left behind: Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again. Alas, how hardly things go right! 'Tis hard to watch on a summer night, For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay, And the summer night is a winter day. "Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes To see thee weeping and wailing so. Oh, lovely ghost," said the fearless knight, "Can the sword of a warrior set it right? Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild, As a cup of water a feverish child, Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood To sleep the sleep a dead lady should? — George MacDonald