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

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood. – John Burroughs, “The Snow-Walkers,” 1866

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

But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. – George Eliot, Middlemarch