Arctic Quotes

If a cold breeze signifies a ghost, then the arctic must be really haunted. I'm going there next week, because I've got to look everywhere when searching for the love of my life. ~ Jarod Kintz

You used to get it in your fishnets
Now you only get it in your nightdress
Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness ...
... Remeber when the boys were all electric? ~ Arctic Monkeys

KIDS IN DISTRESSED FAMILIES ARE GREAT repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told. ~ Mary Karr

You don't have to call me that, you know," she said, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. "There was a time when you called me Winter."

He leaned his elbows on the enclosure wall. "There was also a time when I could come visit you without feeling like I was supposed to toss bread crumbs to earn your favor."

"Bread crumbs? Do I look like a goose?"

He tilted his head to the side. "You don't look like an arctic wolf, either, but that's what the plaque tells me I'm looking at."

Winter leaned back on her hands. "I will not play fetch," she said, "but I might howl if you ask nicely."

He grinned. "I've heard your howl. It's not very wolf-like, either."

"I've been practicing."

"You won't bite me if I come in there, will you?"

"I make no guarantees."

Jacin hopped over the rail and came to sit beside her. She raised an eyebrow. "You don't look like an arctic wolf, either."

"I also don't howl." He considered. "Though I might play fetch, depending on the prize."

"The prize is another game of fetch."

"You drive a hard bargain. ~ Marissa Meyer

Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite. ~ Germaine Greer

I started traveling in the Arctic in 1991, so I experienced the ice in winter and spring. The seasonal sea ice, it has a long season. It starts in September and ends in June. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

We're very interested in seeing what science Exxon has been using for its own purposes because they're tremendously active in offshore oil drilling in the Arctic, for example, where global warming is happening at a much more rapid rate than in more temperate zones. ~ Eric Schneiderman

It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line; they will learn to neatly stack their clothing in their half of the bureau drawer; and they will learn to draw imaginary buildings in their sketchbooks. That is, they will adapt. ~ Amor Towles

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Great tracts of reindeer moss, for example: tiny stars and florets and inklings of an ancient flora growing on exhausted land. Crisp underfoot in summer, the stuff is like a patch of the arctic fallen into the world in the wrong place. Everywhere, there are bony shoulders and blades of flint. On wet mornings you can pick up shards knocked from flint cores by Neolithic craftsmen, tiny flakes of stone glowing in thin coats of cold water. ~ Helen Macdonald

She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North. ~ Philip Pullman

Ottawa - a sub-arctic lumber-village converted by royal mandate into a political cockpit. ~ Goldwin Smith

There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream. ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury

The difference between God's being and ours is more than the difference between the sun and a candle, more than the difference between the ocean and a raindrop, more than the difference between the arctic ice cap and a snow flake, more than the difference between the universe and the room we are sitting in: God's being is qualitatively different. No limitation or imperfection in creation should be projected on to our thought of God. He is the creator; all else is creaturely. All else can pass away in an instant; he necessarily exists forever. ~ Andrew P. Wilson

The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains [of the Brooks Range in Alaska] make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few ... This last American wilderness must remain sacrosanct. ~ William O. Douglas

Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice. ~ Don Young

We can look forward to the day when the free flow of trade, from the southern reaches of Tierra del Fuego to the northern outposts of the Arctic Circle, unites the people of the Western Hemisphere in a bond of mutually beneficial exchange, when all borders become what the U.S.-Canadian border so long has been: a meeting place, rather than a dividing line. ~ Ronald Reagan

The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it's predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer. ~ Bill Kurtis

Going to the Arctic was immense for me. ~ Frederik, Crown Prince Of Denmark

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true. ~ Bill McKibben

it is snail today about 4 whorls
in the ice on the
Arctic floe southerly ~ Eileen Ireland

it might seem advisable to prove that the haunt of the walrus was known to the ancient chinese writers who have furnished accounts of america, but it is unnecessary to do this, seeing that the phenomenon of the ten suns, which is only visible at the arctic circle, is referred to in the ancient books. ~ Alexander McAllan

The Arctic is an ocean. The southern pole is a continent surrounded by ocean. The North Pole is an ocean, or northern waters. It's an ocean surrounded by land, basically. ~ Sylvia Earle

India then being four-sided in plan, the side which looks to the Orient and that to the South, the Great Sea compasseth; that towards the Arctic is divided by the mountain chain of Hmdus from Scythia, inhabited by that tribe of Scythians who are called Sakai; and on the fourth side, turned towards the West, the Indus marks the boundary, the biggest or nearly so of all rivers after the Nile. ~ Megasthenes

The short story can be hot and sweet or hot and fierce. You get it in one sitting or you don't get it. It's like a shore break. It happens quickly, and is right there in front of you, menacing you. First you're looking at the shore break, and then if you don't back up, it's on you. The novel is the long, low wave that you ride south from the Arctic Circle. It's powerful, but its power accumulates over a very long time as it rolls towards the reef. ~ Stephanie Vaughn

In the Arctic, things are already getting freaky. Temperatures have warmed three times faster than the global average. ~ Jeff Goodell

I would love to work with Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, B.B. King. I'd love to do something with Arctic Monkeys, Miles Kane, and The Last Shadow Puppets. If I got a call from Juliette Lewis or PJ Harvey, or Chrissie Hynde, that'd be a thrill. ~ Imelda May

The smile was still on his face, but his words were like the arctic winds. "You don't talk to her. At all." There was no stopping He-Man when he came out to play. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

As technology keeps improving, the price of oil keeps rising, and the ice keeps melting, Arctic energy is bound to be an increasingly bigger part of the global mix. ~ Alex Shoumatoff

It's estimated that the Arctic, within seven years and maybe as soon as 2015, will have its first ice-free summer in the last 700,000 years (keep in mind that humans have only been on this planet for 165,000 years). Earlier projections predicted ice-free summers as far out in the future as 2080. ~ Thom Hartmann

The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not just in money, but in colossal famines, displacements, deaths, and species extinctions, as well as in the loss of some of the things that make this planet a blue-green jewel, including its specialized habitats from the melting Arctic to bleaching coral reefs. ~ Rebecca Solnit

She didn't even want to think of how hellish it would be if all the MacGregors made her feel like this one did, all hot and shaky. She'd have to move to the Arctic Circle before the month was out just to cool off. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

If you have ever wanted to visit somewhere completely wild – away from services, roads, people, and all signs of humanity – head to Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, one of Earth's last true wilderness places. ~ Stefanie Payne

We had an electrical fault about 500 miles into the trip and lost more than half our fuel. We had a fire on the roof. And missed Los Angeles by 3,500 miles at the end of the trip and ending up in the arctic in a snowstorm. ~ Richard Branson

Was it because a lot of the heat went into melting Arctic sea ice or parts of Greenland and Antarctica, and other glaciers? Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface? ... Perhaps all of these things are going on? ~ Kevin E. Trenberth

It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference. ~ Robert Cormier

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee. ~ Robert W. Service

My seams gape wide so I'm tossed aside
To rot on a lonely shore,
While the leaves and mould like a shroud unfold,
For the last of my trails are o'er,
But I float in dreams on Northland streams
That never again I'll see,
As I lie on the marge of the old portage
With grief for company.

When the sunset gilds the timbered hills
That guard Timagami,
And the moon beams play on far James Bay
By the brink of the frozen sea,
In phantom guise my spirit flies
As the dream blades dip and swing
Where the waters flow from the Long Ago
In the spell of the beck'ning spring.

Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal
When the first frost bites the air,
And the mists unfold from the red and gold
That the autumn ridges wear?
When the white falls roar as they did of yore
On the Lady Evelyn,
Do the square-tail leap from the black pool deep
Where the pictured rocks begin?

Oh! the fur fleet sings on Temiscaming
As the ashen paddles bend,
And the crews carouse at Rupert's House
At the sullen winter's end;
But my days are done where the lean wolves run,
And I ripple no more the path,
Where the grey geese race 'cross the red moon's face
From the white winds Arctic wrath.

Tho' the death-fraught way from the Saguenay
To the storied Nipigon,
Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell
I watch as the y ~ George Marsh

The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin. ~ James Lovelock

Dear Amelia,
I hear there are giant jellyfish in the Arctic,
tentacles longer than train carriages.
Haystacks fly over cities in whirlwinds, and fish frogs and turtles rain on towns.
There are spaces of perfect nothing that they call black holes.
Nothing's impossible- that's what you think I'm trying to say.
But I'm not.
There are things that are impossible - unimaginable even- and here they are: That I broke you.
Betrayed you.
Said I'd given up on you. Sent you flying to a park in a thunderstorm.
That I've been wrong about you all along- saw something in your face each time you faded to your past, when the opposite was true.
That all this time you've been lost and that I won't get a second chance to find you.
Amelia your name is a song. It's a name you can't say without smiling or crying, without casting both shadows and light. But there are too many places to hide or get lost in a name like Amelia.
So this is me shouting that name. They say nobody ever escapes from a black hole. They don't know the strength in my Amelia. The strength in your grip when you want to stay out dancing- the strength in your wicked smile.

Riley ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning. ~ Sylvia Earle

In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising. ~ Annalee Newitz

Meg, you have to go. I can't. ~ R.J. Harlick

The weakest being on earth can accomplish feats of strength. The frailest urchin will ring every doorbell on the street in arctic weather or hoist himself aloft to inscribe his name on a virgin monument. ~ Honore De Balzac

A good salesman, as the old (and politically incorrect) saying goes, can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. It's a cliché, but there's some truth to it: Inuit who live above the Arctic Circle use insulated refrigerators to keep their food from freezing in subzero temperatures ~ Josh Kaufman

The arctic loneliness of age. ~ Silas Weir Mitchell

What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there. ~ Rebecca Solnit

8. Santa Claus is concerned about the problem of Arctic ice. The ice is the spouse of the elves, and she is sick. She is the primary source of their magic, as the elves cannot be separated from the place where they live. For many years now, this is all they have asked for for Christmas: that the ice should come back ~ Catherynne M Valente

to plan for a return to the Arctic. One ~ Hampton Sides

There are major challenges, when it comes to making a film in the Arctic. When you're filming wildlife and that wildlife doesn't necessarily take direction, you can spend a lot of time waiting, where you're debating whether or not you should press the record button because it costs a lot of money. ~ Greg MacGillivray

It never occurred to me that half of the population of Vermont wasn't experiencing pretty much what I put myself through every night- bone-crackling cold that made my joints ache, cold so relentless I felt it in my dreams: ice floes, lost expeditions, the lights of search planes swinging over whitecaps as I floundered alone Arctic Seas. ~ Donna Tartt

The risk was spread across the globe from American state pension funds to public health networks in Australia and even to town councils beyond the Arctic Circle. In Norway, for example, the municipalities of Rana, Hemnes, Hattjelldal and Narvik invested some $120 million of their taxpayers' money in CDOs secured on American subprime mortgages. ~ Niall Ferguson

The house cat has gained ground from the Arctic Circle to the Hawaiian archipelago, taken over Tokyo and New York, and stormed the entire continent of Australia. And somewhere along the way, it seized the most precious and closely guarded piece of territory on the planet: the stronghold of the human heart. ~ Abigail Tucker

I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau.
When did all this craziness become my world?
It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all.
The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life.
Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted.
Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back?
I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit. ~ Bear Grylls

In Antartica, The Wright and half a dozen other valleys in the Central Transantarctic Mountains are collectively referred to as the dry valleys. It has not rained here in two million years. No animal abides, no plant grows. A persistent, sometimes ferocious wind has stripped the country to stone and gravel, to streamers of sand. The huge valleys stand stark as empty fjords. You look in vain for any conventional sign of human history- the vestige of a protective wall, a bit of charcoal, a discarded arrowhead.

Nothing. There is no history, until you bore into the layers of rock or until the balls of your fingertips run the rim of a partially exposed fossil. At the height of the austral summer, in December, you smell nothing but the sunbeaten stone. In a silence dense as water, your eye picks up no movement but the sloughing of sand, seeking its angle of repose.

On the flight in from New Zealand it had occurred to me, from what I had read and heard, that Antarctica retained Earth's primitive link, however tenuous, with space, with the void that stretched out to Jupiter and Uranus. At the seabird rookeries of the Canadian Arctic or on the grasslands of the Serengeti, you can feel the vitality of the original creation; in the dry valleys you sense sharply what came before. The Archeozoic is like fresh spoor here. ~ Barry Lopez

I'm sitting in the prow-shaped dining room of a tourist steamer, the Georgi Zhukov, on the Yenisei River, which flows from the foothills of Mongolia to the Arctic Ocean, thus cleaving the northern Eurasian plain – a distance of some two and a half thousand versts. Given Russian distances, and the general arduousness of Russian life, you'd expect a verst to be the equivalent of – I don't know – thirty-nine miles. In fact it's barely more than a kilometer. ~ Martin Amis

It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys, ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Words travel, because the word arctic comes from arktos, Greek for bear. Cancer comes from the Greek word for crab, karkinos. Memory, or one of its locations in the brain, the hippocampus, means seahorse. A bestiary is buried in our language. ~ Rebecca Solnit

This fight against drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a fight about our principles. Its about standing up for our environment, our families and our future, and I wont give up this fight. ~ John F. Kerry

It was a Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who first protected the Arctic Refuge to balance the oil development at Prudhoe Bay with responsible conservation. ~ Robert Dold

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. ~ Jack London

If the world were an orange with 18 segments meeting at the top (the North Pole), roughly 8 of them would be in Russia, Canada would have 4, Denmark 2, and Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. just one apiece. Only a sliver of Alaska, on the Beaufort Sea, lies above the Arctic Circle. ~ Alex Shoumatoff

Current relationship status?" Her voice cut like an arctic chill blowing through the room.
"If you mean me, then you're not my type. If you mean my dad, he's single, but I don't think you're his type either," I said with a small smile. Mercy didn't find it amusing. A small blue vein in her forehead started throbbing like crazy ... "Actually, come to think of it, I don't think he has a type. I've never seen him with a woman.
Mercy, I hate to break it to you, but there's a very real possibility my dad is gay. ~ Jus Accardo

Accidentals

Something out of place,
seen where it doesn't belong.

A surprise on the water
like Tundra Swans unexpected
and flung far from the Arctic
onto a Vermont pond.

Me, driving home, seeing all that white
with sinewy S-shaped necks
out of the corner of my eye.

Blessed is an ordinary Wednesday,
now etched forever in memory
as that Wednesday I went home

another way and found myself
far flung from work, from home,
from whoever I was before

black beaks beckoned me
while four pairs of wings unfolded. ~ Lynn Martin

Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action. ~ Susan Collins

We need to save the Arctic not because of the polar bears, and not because it is the most beautiful place in the world, but because our very survival depends upon it. ~ Lewis Gordon Pugh

This is what I have learned in these short weeks in the refuge:
You cannot afford to make careless mistakes, like meditating in the presence of wolves, or topping your boots in the river, or losing a glove, or not securing your tent down properly. Death is a daily occurrence in the wild, not noticed, not respected, not mourned. In the Arctic, I've learned that ego is as useless as money.
Choose one's travel companions well. Physical strength and prudence are necessary. Imagination and ingenuity are our finest traits.
Expect anything.
You can change your mind like the weather.
Patience is more powerful than anger. Humor is attractive than fear.
Pay attention. Listen. We are most alive when we are discovering.
Humility is the capacity to see.
We are meant to live simply.
We are meant to live joyfully.
Life continues with and without us.
Beauty is another word for God. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

When, as my friend suggested, I stand before Zeus (whether I die naturally, or under sentence of History)I will repeat all this that I have written as my defense.Many people spend their entire lives collecting stamps or old coins, or growing tulips. I am sure that Zius will be merciful toward people who have given themselves entirely to these hobbies, even though they are only amusing and pointless diversions. I shall say to him : "It is not my fault that you made me a poet, and that you gave me the gift of seeing simultaneously what was happening in Omaha and Prague, in the Baltic states and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.I felt that if I did not use that gift my poetry would be tasteless to me and fame detestable. Forgive me." And perhaps Zeus, who does not call stamp-collectors and tulip-growers silly, will forgive. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. ~ James Lovelock

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots babe
I just wanna be yours

Secrets I have held in my heart
Are harder to hide than I thought
Maybe I just wanna be yours
I wanna be yours, I wanna be yours
Wanna be yours, wanna be yours, wanna be yours

Let me be your 'leccy meter and I'll never run out
And let me be the portable heater that you'll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion (I wanna be)
Hold your hair in deep devotion (How deep?)
At least as deep as the Pacific Ocean
I wanna be yours

Read more: Arctic Monkeys - I Wanna Be Yours Lyrics | MetroLyrics ~ Arctic Monkeys

Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re. global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."
He replies:
"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?" p.367 ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Your average knitter, obsessed as we are with the art form, is quickly going to begin producing far more in the way of warm things than are needed by even an arctic-bound knitter. Knitting breeds generosity, true ... but perhaps in a hurry to avoid burying ourselves in hand-knits. There are only so many scarves one knitter can use. ~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

But the poem was born elsewhere, and need not stay. Like the wild geese of the Arctic it heads home, far above the borders, where most things cannot cross. ~ Gary Snyder

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.< ~ Robert Frost

I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was ... an arctic wilderness. ~ Steve Martin

Why would a white caribou come down to Beaver River, where the woodland herd lives? Why would she leave the Arctic tundra, where the light blazes incandescent, to haunt these shadows? Why would any caribou leave her herd to walk, solitary, thousands of miles? The herd is comfort. The herd is a fabric you can't cut or tear, passing over the land. If you could see the herd from the sky, if you were a falcon or a king eider, it would appear like softly floating gauze over the face of the snow, no more substantial than a cloud. "We are soft," the herd whispers. "We have no top teeth. We do not tear flesh. We do not tear at any part of life. We are gentleness itself. Why would any of us break from the herd? Break, apart, separate, these are hard words. The only reason any of us would become one, and not part of the herd, is if she were lost. ~ Kathleen Winter

Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze, ~ Arthur Ransome

I listen to 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Stereophonics, Arctic Monkeys; also the musical Oliver - I can sing every tune. ~ Wayne Rooney

She is becoming what I wanted she the last with the Arctic eyes to become, which is someone who loves me. Simply and truly as I am. It is hard to stare at her because I know she is starting to love me, I am starting to love her back. I don't care what she's done or who she's done it with, I don't care about whatever demons may be in her closet. I care about how she makes me feel and she makes me feel strong and safe and calm and warm and true. It is hard to stare because I am forced to contemplate giving it up. It is hard to stare, but I do it anyway. ~ James Frey

Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. 'Isn't it a mystical word, "arctic"? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn't that pretty? We're going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us ... Time won't be able to catch us. ~ Tove Jansson

I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was ... a large Arctic region covered with ice. ~ Robin Williams

Love is strange. One minute you're jungle fever. The next you're Arctic winter. ~ Ellen Hopkins

In the Village

III

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds. ~ Derek Walcott

By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic. ~ James Lovelock

What people don't understand about the Arctic is that this isn't just about those other people, those Eskimos that have nothing to do with us. The Arctic drives the climate of the whole globe. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic. ~ Michael Hanlon

Tundra is a huge, forever frozen wetland covering the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean. ~ Palmer Cox

A Chipewyan guide named Saltatha once asked a French priest what lay beyond the present life. 'You have told me heaven is very beautiful,' he said. 'Now tell me one more thing. Is it more beautiful than the country of the muskoxen in the summer, when sometimes the mist blows over the lakes, and sometimes the water is blue, and the loons cry very often? That is beautiful. If heaven is still more beautiful, I will be glad. I will be content to rest there until I am very old. ~ Barry Lopez

But his bird says it's amazing,
So now all that's left,
Is the proof that Love's
Not only blind but deaf. ~ Arctic Monkeys

Secret Door"

Fools on parade cavort and carry on
For waiting eyes
That you would rather be beside than in front of
But she's never been the kind to be hollowed by the stares

She swam out of tonight's phantasm
Grabbed my hand and made it very clear
There's absolutely nothing for us here
It's a magnolia celebration
To be attempted on a Wednesday night
It's better than to get a reputation
As a miserable little tyke
At least that's the conclusion
She came to in this overture

The secret door swings behind us
She's saying nothing
She's just giggling along

Her arms were folded most indignant
Not looking like she was soon to leave
I had to squint in order to believe
And then like a butler pushing on a bookshelf
I'm unveiling the unexpected
I, who was earlier reluctant, was suddenly embarrassed and corrected
How could such a creature
Survive in such a habitat

The secret door swings behind us
She's saying nothing
She's just giggling along
And even if they were to find us
I wouldn't notice, I'm completely occupied

At all the fools on parade
Cavort and carry on for waiting eyes
That you would rather be beside than in front of
But she's never been the kind
To be hollowed by the stares
Fools on parade
Frolic and fuck about to make her gaze
Turn to a scribble on a page by a ~ Arctic Monkey's

When you considered this world
people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core
it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were. ~ Martin Amis

For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive - and thrive. 'Harsh' to us is 'home' for them. Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away. ~ Sylvia Earle

Hey, I have an idea," Lex said. "Give me a sec."
He kept trying. "Idea as in 'good idea,' or idea as in 'let's take the Ferris wheel, everyone, I'm sure it'll be a carefree ride of thrills and delights and whimsy' - "
"Does this help?"
Driggs opened his eyes and, in the space of a yoctosecond, popped right into a solid body. Lex half expected to hear a wacky boing sound effect.
She grabbed his arm to keep him that way, while he kept on staring at her bare chest. "So," he said, swallowing, "good idea, then."
"Thank you."
He pulled her close and gave her a kiss. "And thank you for sparing me your devil corset."
She held it up and waved it in his face. "It's a standard bra, Driggs. From, like, Target."
"Satan employs many disguises."
"Like you're from the Land of Superior Underwear. Let's see what sort of designer boxers you've chosen to grace my presence with today." She unzipped his pants and looked. "Dude. Penguins?"
"Um, penguins are officially recognized as the most adorable bird on the planet," he said, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice. "What's wrong with penguins?"
"Nothing - "
"And igloos. See their little igloos?"
"Yes - "
"The Santa hats are a bit much, I'll give you that, but they were a Christmas present, okay? And if I'd known that I was going to die while wearing them and be forever doomed to their Arctic quirkiness - and of hypothermia, too, how's that for irony - "
"Driggs," she i ~ Gina Damico

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges. ~ David Suzuki

Incens'd with indignation Satan stood Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war. ~ John Milton

A couple strolled by behind my chair. For a moment, they got between us and the closest light, casting Freddie in a patch of shadow. As the light peeled away, so did the facade. A desiccated corpse reclined on the divan, with skin turned blue and chapped by arctic windburn. The corpse grinned at me from a lipless mouth, showing sharp yellowed teeth. Her nose and most of one cheek had rotted away, the ragged wounds black with frostbite, and iron talons three inches long curled around the stem of her martini glass. Then the light flooded back and the moment was gone. Freddie must have caught the look on my face. She smiled and gave me a wink. ~ Craig Schaefer

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks. ~ Richard Wagamese

We have a moral responsibility to save wild places like the arctic refuge for future generations, and that is why our country has remained committed to its protection for nearly 50 years. ~ Lois Capps

Remind me to never visit the Arctic Ocean during winter again, ~ S.M. Reine