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

In winter-time visions of Spring and Summer are conjured at will by poets… – Helen Rose Anne Milman Crofton, My Kalendar of Country Delights, “Prelude,” 1903

In winter there is no heat, no light, no noon, evening touches morning, there is fog, and mist, the window is frosted, and you cannot see clearly. The sky is but the mouth of a cave. The whole day is the cave…. Frightful season! Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man. – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables: Fantine, translated from French by Chas. E. Wi

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