Days of high temperature are almost disposable. Time gets pureed in the swelter of it all. Cold-weather hours drags, days and nights become small epics. I welcome the bleakness! – Henry Rollins, “Empowerment Through Libraries,” November 2013, LAWeekly

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

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