Flutes Quotes

I started to study the flute in 1951. The flute has been utilized by African-American musicians as far back as the early Twenties. If you take a look at some of the old pictures of Chick Webb, then you will see the flute right there on the bandstand among the woodwinds. ~ Yusef Lateef

I got used to birds: small black birds flying up from behind a building like God had tossed up a handful of currants, birds squalling in the parking lot of the grocery store (drowning the hum of industrial refrigerators), chachalacas -brown robed nuns to the spangled disco dancer peacocks - cackling in the dust of our yard. I got used to the chatters, squeaks, squalls, peeps, calls that sounded like bitter laughter, whistles, flutes, calls that sounded like souls ascending to heaven. I got used to dust and flatness, to sunsets like pink water pouring from the sky, flooding the earth with orange soda. I got used to wind: the hot, cruel wind of afternoon, the merciful magnolia breeze of night. I got used to it. But then I had to go. ~ Kathleen Founds

I Was Always Leaving"

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through. ~ Jean Nordhaus

The nightingale has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him best of all. For his song is all the joy of life, And we in the mad spring weather, We two have listened till he sang Our hearts and lips together. ~ William Ernest Henley

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score, tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound? ~ Daniel Dennett

They are all different and I find it hard to tell what flute suits me best. ~ James Galway

But what made it bearable were the friendships, of course, the camaraderie and the music and the Shakespeare, the moments of transcendent beauty and joy when it didn't matter who'd used the last of the rosin on their bow or who anyone had slept with, although someone - probably Sayid - had written "Sartre: Hell is other people" in pen inside one of the caravans, and someone else had scratched out "other people" and substituted "flutes." People ~ Emily St. John Mandel

To fairy flutes, As the light advances, In square black boots The cabman dances. ~ J.B. Morton

Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute. ~ Robert Jordan

The sound of the flute will cure epilepsyand sciatic gout. ~ Theophrastus

That beautiful girl, she was a universe, bearer of these words that rang like gongs, that tumbled like flutes made of human bones. ~ Janet Fitch

And for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute ... ~ Tom Stoppard

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. ~ Terry Pratchett

When we teach a child to sing or play the flute, we teach her how to listen. When we teach her to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach him about his body and about space, and when he acts on a stage, he learns about character and motivation. When we teach a child design, we reveal the geometry of the world. When we teach children about the folk and traditional arts and the great masterpieces of the world, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their own place in history. ~ Jane Alexander

Don't you think it's a small mystery that birds can twitter so loudly that they can hear each other's song from several miles away? Those tiny bundles are like living flutes, playing non-stop on themselves. ~ Jostein Gaarder

A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time. ~ Virginia Woolf

Yoga may have originated in India, where the cow has been revered as sacred for thousands of years, but times have changed since Lord Krishna played his flute for the cows of Vrindavan. There are factory farms in India now. ~ Sharon Gannon

I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body's sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl. ~ William Styron

Through the clouds of smoke I seemed to see all old Asia before me, and the adventures of past years behind me. A carnival of old camp-scenes danced before my mind's eye, expiring like shooting-stars in the night - merry songs which came to an end among other mountains and the dying sound of strings and flutes. And I was surprised that I had not had enough of these things and that I was not tired of the light of camp-fires. ~ Sven Hedin

We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot. ~ Albert Camus

I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed. ~ Michael Foley

Every day I practise my flute. I've been doing it for decades and every day I find something new that inspires me for all the rest that I do in my days. ~ Philippe Kahn

At evening the autumnal forests resound
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes, above them the sun
Rolls more darkly by; night enfolds
The dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths.
But in the grassy vale the spilled blood,
Red clouds in which an angry god lives,
Gathers softly, lunar coldness;
All roads lead to black decay.
Beneath the golden boughs of night and stars
The sister's shadow reels through the silent grove
To greet the ghosts of heroes, their bleeding heads;
And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reeds.
O prouder sorrow! you brazen altars
Today an immense anguish feeds the mind's hot flame,
The unborn descendants. ~ Georg Trakl

Harry ran upstairs to their dark dormitory. He pulled out the cloak and then his eyes fell on the flute Hagrid had given him for Christmas. He pocketed it to use on Fluffy - he didn't feel much like singing. ~ J.K. Rowling

You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so! ~ Jerome Richardson

To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers.
[Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.] ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I took lessons for about everything you could imagine - gymnastics to karate to flute and piano. My mom always definitely kept me in some kind of class or program, but for guitar, I kinda gave up on then kinda just taught myself. Same thing with piano. I've never been good with following lessons. ~ Elle Varner

The wind plays the world like an instrument. Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won't grow in cement. And as heart beats bring percussion fallen trees bring repercussions. Cities play upon our souls like broken drums. ~ Saul Williams

So, what did you want to watch?'

'Thought we might play a game instead,' he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. 'Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won't froth like that.'

Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she'd got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. 'The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I'll totally kick your arse.'

Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. 'You're gonna kick my arse?'

'Until it's black and blue and you won't be able to sit down for a week.' That sounded very arrogant. 'Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.'

'Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it's logic and tactics,' Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake.

For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get ~ Sarra Manning

...Her eyes, he says, are stars at dusk,
Her mouth as sweet as red-rose-musk;
And when she dances his young heart swells
With flutes and viols and silver bells;
His brain is dizzy, his senses swim,
When she slants her ragtime eyes at him...

Moonlight shadows, he bids her see,
Move no more silently than she.
It was this way, he says, she came,
Into his cold heart, bearing flame.
And now that his heart is all on fire
Will she refuse his heart's desire?―... ~ Conrad Aiken

At the edge of heaven, tatters of autumn
Cloud. After ten thousand miles of clear
Lovely morning, the west wind arrives. Here,
Long rains haven't slowed farmers. Frontier
Willows air thin kingfisher colors, and
Red fruit flecks mountain pears. As a flute's
Mongol song drifts from a tower, one
Goose climbs clear through vacant skies. ~ Du Fu

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants, and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. ~ Walter Pater

But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

No-one knows what huge suns will illuminate the life of the future. It may be that artists will transform the grey dust of the cities into hundred-coloured rainbows; that the never-ending thunderous music of volcanoes will be turned into the sound of flutes resounding from mountain ranges; that ocean waves will be forced to play on nets of chords ... ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky

Lend your ear then to this tutti of steeples; diffuse over the whole the buzz of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down, as with a demi-tint, all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound, and say if you know any thing in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling than that tumult of bells; than that furnace of music; than those ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high; than that city which is but one orchestra; than that symphony rushing and roaring like a tempest. ~ Victor Hugo

It's very important for me to try to relax when I'm travelling, and playing my flute helps me to unwind. ~ Andrea Bocelli

I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music. ~ Hafez

For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don't know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me. ~ Morton Feldman

A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods - the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Everyone who plays the flute should learn singing. ~ James Galway

I carry my flute around everywhere I go and pull it out. It actually becomes a panacea for me, for things that go on around me. It really gives me relief and calmness, tranquility. ~ Hubert Laws

Any professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you've got to arrive at is a kind of typical gestural crap, right? You might agree, though you wouldn't call it gestural crap. ~ Morton Feldman

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest. ~ Victor Hugo

In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky ... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights. ~ Erik Fosnes Hansen

A flute without holes, is not a flute. A donut without a hole, is a Danish. ~ Chevy Chase

He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor, and it gathered into a roar that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated into the sinuses, and finally into the very minds of those hearing it, taking itself higher and higher, more and more awful and beautiful, the originating ideal of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship's horn, the locomotive's lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moaning of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And the time was gone forever. ~ Denis Johnson

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Lakes, carillonst,
Pools and bells,
Fifes and freshets,
Harps and wells;
Flutes and rivers,
Streams, bassoons,
Geysers, trumpets,
Chimes lagoons,
Hear the music,
Drink the water,
As we poor lambs
All go to slaughter.
I love you Eliot.
Good-bye. I cry.
Tears and violins.
Hearts and flowers,
Flowers and tears.
Rosewater, good-bye. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I'll always be happy if they'd leave me alone in that delightful and unknown furthest corner, apart from struggles, putrefactions and nonsense; the ultimate corner of sugar and toast, where the mermaids catch the branches of the willows and the heart opens to a flute's sharpness. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Kili and Fili rushed for their bags and brought back little fiddles; Dori, Nori, and Ori brought out flutes from somewhere inside their coats; Bombur produced a drum ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. ~ Oscar Wilde

Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It's a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways - when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about him - how many men would admit that they loved ducks? (This brings up an important point: I don't know what Mark's favorite animal is. I doubt it's a duck.) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I point at Drew, as I turn to Dawn. See? My sister finds her soulmate, and not only does she get rewarded with love and happiness, she gets free champagne flutes, and dutch ovens, and fifty-dollar checks. And what do I get? What do I get on a day when I still haven't found anyone to love? When I'm waiting by the phone for some jerk to call me, and acting like a crazy woman, e-mailing him at three a.m., clutching at straws that I might ever find anyone? Do I get gifts? No! I get condemnation from my grandmother, and I get to wear a dress that makes me look like a baked potato. ~ Kim Gruenenfelder

I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world . ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I was a bit of a tomboy, so I played softball and basketball. Then I was also a cheerleader. And I played flute too. ~ Natalie Grant

All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar. ~ Ian Anderson

Once upon a time there was a girl who discovered that if she played a certain tune on a jade flute, she could summon up jade gnomes, a peculiar, harmless, but rather creepy looking spirit of the underground. The fact is that many of us have talents like this, but generally never discover them due to lack of opportunity, since one can go one's entire life without playing a jade flute, or discovering that one can speak the language of ground sloths, or turning fruitcake into solid tungsten by singing Sinatra tunes to it under a quarter moon. ~ Ursula Vernon

I am a part of all you see In Nature: part of all you feel: I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom; in the tree I am the sap that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots. ~ Madison Cawein

Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses ... ~ Edward Abbey

The only good political movement I've seen lately was Occupy Wall Street. They had no leaders, which was genius. But unfortunately it always ends up with some hippy playing a flute. ~ John Lydon

The heart-flute Knows how to charm the world. ~ Sri Chinmoy

I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

If it is not my portion to meet thee in this life then let me ever feel that I have missed thy sight
let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have gained nothing
let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me
let me not forget a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When my rooms have been decked out and the flutes sound and the laughter there is loud, let me ever feel that I have not invited thee to my house
let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I learned that the first technology appeared in the form of stone tools, 2.6 million years ago. First entertainment comes evidence from flutes that are 35,000 years old. And evidence for first design comes 75,000 years old - beads. And you can do the same with your genes and track them back in time. ~ Zeresenay Alemseged

The fluteplayer puts breath into a flute, and who makes the music? Not the flute. The Fluteplayer! ~ Rumi

Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet ... it's a tuba among the flutes. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

What's even worse than a flute? - Two flutes! ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Think of how strange the colours and sights of the world would be for a blind man abruptly made to see or a man deaf from birth hearing the playing of a hundred flutes ~ Paul Hoffman

But they hushed, all at once and quite abruptly, when he stood still at center stage, his arms straight out from his shoulders, and went rigid, and began to tremble with a massive inner dynamism. Nobody present had ever seen anyone stand so still and yet so strangely mobile. He laid his head back until his scalp contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor, and it gathered into a roar that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated into the sinuses and finally into the very minds of those hearing it, taking itself higher and higher, more and more awful and beautiful, the originating ideal of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship's horn, the locomotive's lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moanmusic of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever. ~ Denis Johnson

The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy. ~ Plato

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing pain.
Remember the lips
where the wind-breath originated,
and let your note be clear.
Don't try to end it.
Be your note. ~ Rumi

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute. ~ Janet Fitch

Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself. "Werner?" Jutta whispers. He blinks; ~ Anthony Doerr

In my humdrum life I was exalted one day by perfumes exhaled by a world that had been so bland. They were the troubling heralds of love. Suddenly love itself had come, with its roses and its flutes, sculpting, papering, closing, perfuming everything around it. Love had blended with the most immense breath of the thoughts themselves, the respiration that, without weakening love, had made it infinite. But what did I know about love itself? Did I, in any way, clarify its mystery, and did I know anything about it other than the fragrance of its sadness and the smell of its fragrances? Then, love went away, and the perfumes, from shattered flagons, were exhaled with a purer intensity. The scent of a weakened drop still impregnates my life. ~ Marcel Proust

I began to realize that my pictures of God were old. They were not old in the sense of antique champagne flutes, which are abundant with significance precisely because they are old - when you sip from them you remember your grandmother using them at birthday dinners, or your sister toasting her beloved at their wedding. Rather, they were old like a seventh-grade health textbook from 1963: moderately interesting for what it might say about culture and science in 1963, but generally out of date. ~ Lauren F. Winner

When you play the oboe, the flute or other wind instruments, there is something between you and the breath; there is the embouchure, the reed, etc. But with the recorder, I receive an immediate response from the instrument. This is something that attracted me to the instrument, that I could immediately feel the response of what I was doing. ~ Michala Petri

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? ~ Kahlil Gibran

She batted her lashes again. He stopped and looked at her, his hands full of champagne, flutes, and a glass bowl full of strawberries. Blake bit his tongue.
After a deep sigh he gave Livia a command. "Do not do that again. I'm trying to exercise some self-control here."
Livia pouted and batted her lashes some more.
He smiled and shook his head. "Damn it. You'll pay for that. ~ Debra Anastasia

The Reed Flute's Work
I say to the reed flute, You do the work,
yet you know sweet secrets too.
You share the Friend's breathing.
What could you need from me?
The reed replies, Knowledge is total
destruction. I say, Burn me completely then
and leave no knowing.
How could I, when it's knowledge that leads us?
But this knowledge has lost compassion
and grown disgusted with itself.
It has forgotten about silence and emptiness.
A reed flute has nine holes
and is a model of human consciousness,
beheaded, though still in love with lips.
This is your disgrace, this moaning.
Weep for the sounds you make. ~ Rumi

The quickest way to unlock your talent is to take the flute out of the box. ~ James Galway

All at once, it seemed, the leaves of cottonwood trees around the cabin turned golden and whispered to themselves, then curled into black flutes and floated to the ground in crispy, lacy heaps. ~ Kristin Hannah