It was a late-October Sunday, the leaves tinged with brown, and the air crisp in a way that made you shiver if you stood still too long. – Joe Kita, “Growing Old and Staying Young,” Wisdom of Our Fathers, 1999

Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods. Every step that Time takes imprints upon the fields as they grow bare and brown… – Charles Nodier, Trilby, ou le lutin d’Argail/Trilby: The Fairy of Argyle,

[T]he sun declined, and we both fell into twilight silence. Night, which in autumn seems to fall from the sky at once, it comes so quickly, chilled us, and we rolled ourselves in our cloaks… – Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques