Winter Journal Quotes

We are all aliens to ourselves. ~ Paul Auster

When the publisher here in America wanted to put the word "memoir" on the title page [of 'Winter Journal'] and on the cover, I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." No genre whatsoever. It's an independent work not really connected to those things at all. ~ Paul Auster

I don't have all the facts. And I might misremember. As a matter of fact, after I finished Winter Journal, I realized that I'd gotten someone's name wrong. ~ Paul Auster

What I'm trying to do in [Winter Journal] is to tell the story of a man's life from birth, but there are different versions of him, four different versions. ~ Paul Auster

I thought, "Well, I'm writing about early childhood, so maybe it would make sense to write about late childhood as well, early adulthood." Those were my thoughts, and this was how this crazy book [Winter Journal] was composed. I've never seen a book with pictures like at the end, pictures related to things you've read before. ~ Paul Auster

For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house ... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail. ~ Paul Auster

I say at the very end of "Winter Journal" that I do dream about my father often. I think I have a tremendous compassion for him, which has grown over the years. A certain kind of pity for him also in that he was so unrealised as a human being, so dogged, and so shut-off from people in many ways. You know, I've been writing another book, and it's another non-fiction autobiographical work, kind of a compliment to "Winter Journal", and it's just finished. ~ Paul Auster

My children haven't read 'Winter Journal'. They have read some of my work, but I really don't foist it on them. I want them to be free to discover it in their own good time. I think reading an intimate memoir by your father - or an intimate autobiographical work, whatever we want to call this thing - you have to come at it at the right moment, so I'm certainly not foisting it upon them. ~ Paul Auster

When I was first starting out, you'd have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody. ~ Edgar Winter

Everybody was dying, or already dead, or leaving other people, and the year was dying into winter, and the only thing to do was make some noise. ~ Marina Endicott

A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches. ~ Anne Porter

Lucky's monologue: "(...)the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts peniciline and succedanea in a word(...) ~ Samuel Beckett

Autumn calls the forest to rest, to exhale in a flood of colors rubbed to a fiery warmth on the hearth of both hill and plain before nodding off to a winter's slumber. And what better way to turn the page of a season than to celebrate it in a manner such as this? ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I'm going to make it a law that the correct way to address your sovereign is my giving a high five.' Kai's smiled brightened. 'That's genius. Me too. ~ Marissa Meyer

My best writing has always been in journals. ~ Thomas Merton

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. ~ Victor Hugo

If it was that easy, your father would have told you himself. This-like any real truth-must be discovered on your own. Honestly, I have no idea what your father might have told you. I do know he felt you were too optimistic, too naïve, and Royce is … well … not. At our last meeting, I spoke to him of Royce. It was Danbury's idea-his last wish-that if I ever found his wayward son, I should introduce the two of you. I think he felt Royce could provide you with that last piece of the puzzle, the one thing he failed to give you. Consider it one last chicken test if you will, one whose lesson you might not see the virtue of just yet." The professor stroked his beard around the edges of his mouth. "I suspect you have regrets at how you left home. Guilt perhaps. This is your chance to ease that feeling. This is the door your father left open for you. Besides, you don't need to marry Royce-just accept this single assignment."

"What assignment?" Hadrian asked.

"I need for you to fetch me a book. It's a journal written by a former professor here at the university."

"He means he wants us to steal a book." Royce had picked up what looked to be a six-inch incisor from a bear and was rolling it between his hands.

"More like borrow without permission," Arcadius expl-ained.

"Can't you just ask, especially since you only want to borrow it?" Hadrian said.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. First, it would be heretical to ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Grandmother Hannah comes to me at Pesach and when I am lighting the sabbath candles. The sweet wine in the cup has her breath ... a little winter no spring can melt. ~ Marge Piercy

An artist who is driven by money is no longer driven by art ~ Jason E. Hodges

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. ~ Wendell Berry

Nothing there is that does not love the sun. It gives us warmth and life; it melts the bitter snow and ice of winter; it makes plants grow and flowers bloom. It gives us long summer evenings when the darkness never comes. It saves us from the bitter days of midwinter, when the darkness is broken from only a handful of hours and the sun is cold and distant, like the pale eye of a corpse. ~ Neil Gaiman

It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal. ~ Madonna Ciccone

What good will convincing the princess do?" Bria asked. "I know she's supposed to be well-loved, but she's still just a young girl."
"The viceroy is considering appointing her Alderaan's representative to the Imperial Senate next year," Winter said. "Don't underestimate Leia's strength of purpose or influence. ~ A.C. Crispin

Nelson and Winter had spent more than a decade examining how companies work, trudging through swamps of data before arriving at their central conclusion: "Much of firm behavior," they wrote, is best "understood as a reflection of general habits and strategic orientations coming from the firm's past," rather than "the result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision tree."6.15 ~ Charles Duhigg

The wars you'll wage aren't decided when you fight them. They're decided before that, by the extent of your effort and the substance of your sacrifices. They are decided by the choices you make every single day. So ask yourself: 'how powerful do I choose to be? ~ Evan Winter

They're innocent movies, and they're fun movies and there were no pretensions about 'em. ~ Alex Winter

I'm pretty smart with boys. I know how to handle them and I know what to do around them. ~ Ariel Winter

The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) ~ J.B.S. Haldane

As we pulled up at the big school gates, I saw tears rolling down my dad's face. I felt confused as to what part of nature or love thought this was a good idea. My instinct certainly didn't; but what did I know? I was only eight.
So I embarked on this mission called boarding school. And how do you prepare for that one?
In truth, I found it really hard; there were some great moments like building dens in the snow in winter, or getting chosen for the tennis team, or earning a naval button, but on the whole it was a survival exercise in learning to cope.
Coping with fear was the big one. The fear of being left and the fear of being bullied--both of which were very real.
What I learned was that I couldn't manage either of those things very well on my own.
It wasn't anything to do with the school itself, in fact the headmaster and teachers were almost invariably kind, well-meaning and good people, but that sadly didn't make surviving it much easier.
I was learning very young that if I were to survive this place then I had to find some coping mechanisms.
My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, as a way to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you want is to be at home.
I missed my mum and dad terribly, and on the occasional night where I felt this worst, I remember trying to muffle my tears in my pillow while the rest of the dormitory slept.
Bear Grylls

I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work. ~ Lara Pulver

The oaks and firs stood up as they reached the interstate and pushed on through the South West Pacific Highway to the Salmon River Highway, past places with names like Falling Creek, Tualatin, Joe Dancer Park, and Erratic Rock. Places you could walk out into and die and never be found. He could imagine them seared by sun in summer and shrouded in snow in winter. Hammered by hail the size of coins in spring and autumn, pounding flesh and smashing bone, processed to be carried off chunk by speck in the guts of birds. ~ Warren Ellis

Laura had hoped, she'd written in her journal, that whatever befell her daughters, they would not be damaged at the level of instinct, that exact phrase. ~ Haven Kimmel

There's a confidence you find when you finally feel right in your body. ~ Ariel Winter

Our grieving was an exchange of cakes through the winter because sometimes the only things you can do in response to big things are small things ~ Joanne Glenn

The winter will be long and bleak. Nature has a dismal aspect. ~ Charles Nodier

I started out playing ukulele when I was 5 or 6 years old. ~ Edgar Winter

I need you like a blossom needs rain, like the winter ground needs spring-to soothe my parched soul. ~ Solange Nicole

Mama grizzlies mate later than other bears. They have two cubs instead of four. They wait four years - about twice as long as other bears - between having cubs. And after they're pregnant, if winter is hard or their health is not good or the food supply is uncertain, they re-absorb the embryo into their body. ~ Gloria Steinem

O, Winter! Put away thy snowy pride;
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell. ~ Thomas Chatterton

Of course, the outcome of the war would not have been changed. The war was lost perhaps, when it was started. At least it was lost in the winter of '42, in Russia. ~ Adolf Galland

Let my soul, a shining tree, Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter's night The clear-eyed angels may alight. ~ Siegfried Sassoon

It is freezing fit to split a stone. ~ Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne

If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools. ~ Henry Beston

Her bed faced three large uncurtained windows that looked due eat, and she loved the endless variety of sunrises that greeted her from day to day. Growing up in Florida and in the suburbs, she had never realized how the sun paced back and forth through the year, like a restless dog on a tether. During the winter it rose far to the southeast and skulked along the ridgeline, disappearing in mid-afternoon. But now it rising a little past due east, on its way to the northeast where it would achieve the summer solstice, then begin the slow day-by-day journey back to the winter solstice. Watching the sunrise, with its reminder of the endless and inevitable cycles of life, was, she thought, her version of religion. ~ Vicki Lane

We started out when I was 6 years old. We played ukuleles and sang Everly Brothers songs. ~ Edgar Winter

The sound of old winter ice breaking at spring's touch, ~ Raymond E. Feist

You've never really know what it's like to trust God to provide for you today, because you've got today provided for. And probably tomorrow too. Maybe even into next winter, with all the food socked away in that extra freezer in the garage. ~ Craig Groeschel

Don't curse the snow, curse yourself for moving to a place with snow. ~ Ben Tolosa

The winter passed as slowly and peacefully as a boa constrictor digesting a valium addict. ~ Tom Robbins

I left the Shire,
got 7 outstanding N.E.W.T.'s
and became a Vampire;
Because Winter is Coming... ~ Various

In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire. ~ Katherine Mansfield