Along about the beginning of February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer, I caught one of those colds which last for two days in the children and two weeks with me. – Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons, 1957

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February…. Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar. – Joseph Wood Krutch

[I]n the gloomy month of February…. The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time… – Washington Irving, Oliver Goldsmith: A Biography, 1849

Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. – Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart, 1986