Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it. – Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, translated from German

and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day. – Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. – Author Unknown