It is a chill blue December day; gloomy, icy, transparent.
quotes about the winter season - by women writers.
Nothing is better than a freezing winter day, lingering over a delicious hot drink, feeling the delicate touch of snow on your skin, watching the landscape turn white, and not fearing the cold.
Winter is my season. I am a daughter of ice and the candor of snowflakes, born in January. A creature who does not fear solitude, who moves slowly, and who faces life with enduring patience and determination, I welcome winter with open arms.
Right…after painting me as if I'm The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia, maybe it’s time to return to the nature of this post.
Here’s a collection of quotes by women writers about the winter season.
Enjoy!
It is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
― excerpt from Tulips by Sylvia Plath
Hope was there and laughed me out of sadness whispering "winter will not linger long."
― from Death, That Struck When I Was Most Confiding by Emily Brontë
And the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover.
― The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.
― Winter Love by Linda Gregg
And too much snowing and too much silence. The snow has quietness in it; no songs, no smells, no shouts nor traffic. When I speak my own voice shocks me.
― from Letter Written During a January Northeaster by Anne Sexton
Crisply the bright snow whispered, crunching beneath our feet; behind us as we walked along the parkway, our shadows danced, fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
― A Winter Bluejay by Sara Teasdale
…while the first snows of winter floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced all trace of the world.
― Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson
In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
― excerpt from White-Eyes by Mary Oliver
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.
― excerpt from Snowy Night by Mary Oliver
Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places.
― Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
It was as dark as it would ever be but then I knew to expect this, the month being December, the month of darkness.
― from Winter Recipes by Louise Glück
She departed, murmuring words about masses of flowers and a drawing-room always beautiful even in the depths of winter.
― Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
For many a week, and many a day
My heart was weighed with sinking gloom
When morning rose in mourning grey
And faintly lit my prison room
But angel like, when I awoke,
Thy silvery form, so soft and fair
Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke
Of cloudy skies and mountains bare;
― excerpt from To a Wreath of Snow by Emily Brontë
Light, snow, silence, the empty streets, the fog, the thrilling cold—so much beauty. Like breathing pure oxygen.
― Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980
It is a chill blue December day; gloomy, icy, transparent. I am still resting. I am resting and resting-and sit about reading and relaxing.
― Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written c. December 1960
But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back"—almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour—the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrise. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the blue castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings-torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revelation and wonder.
― The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
with the edge of winter sky
leaning over us in icy stars.
Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.
― Winter Solstice Chant by Annie Finch
Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.
― Edith Sitwell
Melancholy infinite as the forest, endless as these long nights of winter.
— The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter
I just stood there, listening and holding out my hands to the soft glitter falling through the air.
— excerpt from Snowy Night by Mary Oliver
Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch.
— The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Those forlorn regions of dreary space-that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surrounded the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold. Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own.
— Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.
— Winter by Ali Smith
Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.
— Beloved by Toni Morrison
Tell me, watcher, is it winter?
Say how long my sleep has been?
Have the woods I left so lovely,
Lost their robes of tender green?
— excerpt from Gleneden’s Dream by Emily Brontë
I hope you enjoyed this collection of quotes about the winter season.
Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week,
Nicole.
This was so beautiful !