The Winter Boy Quotes & Sayings

If I were you? I would go west instead of east. Land in Dorne and raise my banners. The Seven Kingdoms will never be more ripe for conquest than they are right now. A boy king sits the Iron Throne. The north is in chaos, the riverlands a devastation, a rebel holds Storm's End and Dragonstone. When winter comes, the realm will starve. And who remains to deal with all of this, who rules the little king who rules the Seven Kingdoms? Why, my own sweet sister. There is no one else. My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule. My uncle Kevan would make a passably good regent if someone pressed the duty on him, but he will never reach for it. The gods shaped him to be a follower, not a leader." Well, the gods and my lord father. "Mace Tyrell would grasp the sceptre gladly, but mine own kin are not like to step aside and give it to him. And everyone hates Stannis. Who does that leave? Why, only Cersei. — George R R Martin

We were, fair queen, /
Two lads that thought there was no more behind /
But such a day to-morrow as to-day, /
And to be boy eternal. — William Shakespeare

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he'd hit sixty he'd hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He'd been assured
this is exactly how a woman's breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter's night, holding his wife's breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared. — Mary Ruefle

Longstreet took a deep breath. In the winter the fever had come to Richmond. In a week they were dead. All within a week, all three. He saw the sweet faces: moment of enormous pain. The thing had pushed him out of his mind, insane, but no one knew it. He had not thought God would do a thing like that ... she kept standing in the door: the boy is dead. And he could not even help her, could say nothing, could not move, could not even take her into his arms. Nothing to give. One strength he did not have. Oh God: my boy is dead. — Michael Shaara

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket. — Ernest Hemingway,

What the Lady was happening? The man had his mouth smashing on Tarin's, and his tongue was shoving at Tarin's tongue. Tarin tried to scream. The men did eat boys. It wasn't just a scary fire-rumor. He bucked his body and writhed. He was going to be consumed alive!

"Lady!" he bawled like a little kid. It sort of worked.

The man moved his mouth and laughed.
"Now, no fussing. I won't hurt you if you're a good boy."

"Don't eat me," moaned Tarin. He was too scared to be brave. This was why no boys ever escaped from the Before Times buildings. The men ate them! No wonder men were so sleek and strong. They had boy meat to get them through the winter — Syd McGinley

DCI Horner's advice to Jack Spratt: "Remember, m'boy," his old boss had said, eyes twinkling, "that if anyone tries to get the better of you, stand up straight and say to yourself in an imperious air, 'I am the new Mrs. de Winter now!' You'll find it works wonders. — Jasper Fforde

She was beginning to stir questions in me that I'd spent all my life refusing to ask, since the day I had looked down from the window at the broken body of the schoolboy on the flagstones a long way below, while a master hurried from the cloisters with his black gown flapping in the winter wind, to see what had happened: the day when I was suddenly old enough to understand that I had a choice. I could either do what that other boy had done, or I could spend the rest of my life outside society, where it was safe — Adam Hall

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

I lost my temper," I finish. "I lost my temper. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Well, no one means to lose their temper, my boy," the Captain smiles. "If they did, it wouldn't be lost. — Rebecca Harris

It was the skinny boy's stillness, he decided later. Those lines of age in a face as young as mine. His look of winter on a lovely spring day. — John Le Carre

Alive. That was the first thing.
A daughter. That was the second.
They knew this without being told, without searching the newborn's features for some telltale sign. If the child had been a boy, the Mothers would have emerged empty-handed. They would have filed quietly from the house, leaving the family to their disappointment.
A boy was simply another mouth to feed, another body to keep warm during the winter. A boy might wield an axe or trap a bird. He might mend a roof or skin a rabbit.
Such things were useful; there was no denying it. But a daughter? A daughter could do those too, and much more besides. — Meg McKinlay

You still know that boy. He was very angry at fourteen, fifteen, in summer and winter, at home or in the world. So angry that his face contorted in photos. The camera was a question and his face did not know the answer. — Dave Eggers

He [Logan] wasn't wearing his baseball cap for once, and the day was bright, almost warm, so his face was bathed in a soft glow from the winter sun. Logan's normally shaded eyes looked a much lighter brown in the sun, and they crinkled up at the corners as he gave me an easy smile.
Are you deliberately screwing with me, sun? What's next? Is his smile going to sparkle as a bell-like "ding" chimes in the distance? Is a butterfly going to land on his shoulder? Give the boy a white horse and it's a wrap for poor Paige's heart. — Cara Lynn Shultz

Dan wasn't bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy. — Stephen King

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

I read Norman Lock's The Boy in His Winter with delight and amazement. Styled in the vernacular of a rapidly changing America, it stays true to the themes of Mark Twain's original: class relations, race and slavery, childhood innocence, moral hypocrisy - and, of course, the stark beauty and unforgiving nature of America's greatest river. I finished this absolutely elegant narrative feeling that Huck Finn has never been more alive. — David Oshinsky

She lived with the doctor on Via Po, in a gloomy, dark apartment, barely warmed in winter by just a small Franklin stove, and she no longer threw out anything, because everything might eventually come in handy: not even the cheese rinds or the foil on chocolates, with which she made silver balls to be sent to missions to free a little black boy. — Primo Levi

We are all of the same substance, the same life. Though there are many differences between us, those are merely the shadows that delineate our boundaries. Our light is the same. — Sally Wiener Grotta

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

Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born. — George R R Martin

Look at the four-spaced year
That imitates four seasons of our lives;
First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers,
Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child,
Its way unsteady while the countryman
Delights in promise of another year.
Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses,
And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness,
The boy to manhood. There's no time of year
Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living,
New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn,
First flushes gone, the temperate season here
Midway between quick youth and growing age,
And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us,
Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair,
Terror in palsy as he walks alone. — Ovid

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

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

From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty, were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not, was in his eyes a schoolmaster
that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys. — Henry Adams

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

I'll send a boy round to [the crazy farmer] Martin's and ask him to come by with a couple bottles."
"Get five or six," Bast said. "It's getting cold at night. Winter's coming."
The innkeeper smiled. "I'm sure Martin will be flattered. — Patrick Rothfuss

In May, when the grass was so green it hurt to look at it, the air so overpoweringly sweet you had to go in and turn on the television just to dull your senses- that's when Claire knew it was time to look for the asparagus in the pastures. If it rained she wondered if she should check our secret places for morels. In June, when the strawberries ripened, we made hay and the girls rode on top of the wagon. I was ever mindful of the boy who had fallen off and broken his neck. In July, the pink raspberries, all in brambles in the woods and growing up our front porch, turned black and tart. In August, the sour apples were the coming thing. In September there were the crippled-up pears in the old orchard. In October, we picked the pumpkin and popcorn. And all winter, when there was snow, we lived for the wild trip down the slopes on the toboggan. — Jane Hamilton

out-of-doors there was quite a snow-storm. "It is the white bees that are swarming," said Kay's old grandmother. "Do the white bees choose a queen?" asked the little boy; for he knew that the honey-bees always have one. "Yes," said the grandmother, "she flies where the swarm hangs in the thickest clusters. She is the largest of all; and she can never remain quietly on the earth, but goes up again into the black clouds. Many a winter's night she flies through the streets of the town, and peeps in at the windows; and they then freeze in so wondrous a manner that they look like flowers. — Hans Christian Andersen

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? — Kurt Vonnegut

One day in May 1930, Celia took her twoyear-
old son for a swim at the yacht club, but it
was already the onset of the Argentine winter,
cold and windy. That night, the little boy had
a coughing fit. A doctor diagnosed him as suffering
from asthmatic bronchitis and prescribed
the normal remedies, but the attack lasted for
several days. Ernestito had developed chronic
asthma, which would afflict him for the rest of
his life and irrevocably change the course of his
parents' lives. — Jon Lee Anderson

Have you ever noticed the perfection of nature? The seasons and how one changes into the next, the falling leaves, composting soil, rains, new seedlings, sunshine, growth, blossoms, etc. Grass grows, deer eats grass, lion eats deer, deer population is stabilized so there is grass for other animals; sunrise and sunset, boy and girl, winter and summer. — Bryan Kest

She'd been trained to survive many things: starvation and bullet wounds. Winter nights and scouring sun. Double-tied knots and interrogations at knifepoint. But this? A boy's lips on hers. Moving and melding. Soft and strength, velvet and iron. Opposite elements that tugged and tor Yael from the inside. Feelings bloomed, hot and warm. Deep and dark. — Ryan Graudin

It was snowing when I got off the bus at Flax Hill. Not quite regular snowfall, not exactly a blizzard. This is how it was: The snow came down heavily, settled for about a minute, then the wind moved it - more rolled it, really - onto another target. One minute you were covered in snow, then it sped off sideways, as if a brisk, invisible giant had taken pity and brushed you down. — Helen Oyeyemi

Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. The he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh's little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn't trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist's, — Fredrik Backman

The light bounced off the water and shimmered against the buildings on the other side of the river. Joseph walked, listening to the sound of what was beneath his feet, and soon he noticed he was alone. He turned and saw Frankie had stopped beside Albert and filled her jacket pockets. Looking at the two of them, Joseph wondered for a moment if Leo had ever come down here to go mudlarking, his red hair shining in the sun. the vision seemed so vivid, but then Joseph remembered that Leo wasn't real, and the boy dissolved like smoke into the winter sky. — Brian Selznick

The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, "All summer in the field, and all winter in the study." And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All these miseries seemed compounded into a single horrific moment one misty winter morning when she turned from the woodstove with an iron skillet full of hot bacon grease, potatoes, and onions and tripped over Harry Junior, who was lying on his back on the floor. She dropped the skillet and its contents directly onto the boy's neck and chest. She — Daniel James Brown

I was 12 when I ordered my first guitar out of the worn and discolored pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The story that I bought it on the installment plan is untrue, the invention of a Hollywood press agent. Local color. I paid cash, $8, money I had saved as a hired hand on my uncle Calvin's farm, baling and stacking hay. Prairie hay, used as feed for the cattle in winter. It was mean work for a wiry boy, but ambition made me strong. — Gene Autry

He recognized me. Not as other people would, not as a budding hero out of stories. Tapis had no time for such things. He remembered me as the smudgy, starveling boy who fell down his stairs fever-sick and crying one winter night. You could say I loved him even more for that. — Patrick Rothfuss

'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ... ' 'What's this - an allegory?' No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.' — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The first real day of spring is like the first time a boy holds your hand. A flood of skin-tingling warmth consumes you, and everything shines with a fresh, colorful glow, making you forget that anything as cold and harsh as winter ever existed. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Then coffin, black with silver handles with the dead boy in a black velvet suit. If you're never gonna sweat why not go out in winter style? — Marlon James

This is for all the people I'll never meet. This is for the person I might have kissed had I taken a different subway line on Saturday and the person I might have been if that boy hadn't broken my mother's teenage heart. This is for the people I would have loved if last winter hasn't been so cold and for the city I would have called home if I had written haikus on napkins and carried pens in dress pockets and in the knots of my hair. This is for who I was, who I am, who I might be. This is for you. — Chuck Pulaski

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

A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail. — Anne Ursu

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

Suicide in the trenches:
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
* * * * *
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go. — Siegfried Sassoon