Wintering: The Power Of Rest And Retreat In Difficult Times Quotes
"Parenting a young child brings one long succession of germs into the house."
"Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again."
"Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones."
"Sleeping is my sanity, my luxury, my addiction."
"Winter is a quiet house in lamplight, a spin in the garden to see bright stars on a clear night."
"We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again."
"Dormice don’t work to a strict timetable; their hibernation is dependent on the weather."
"In the summer, they live in trees, but the temperature fluctuation up high is too great."
"Safely in their hibernation nest, the dormice will lower their body temperature to that of their surroundings."
"I had always imagined hibernation as one long monotonous sleep."
"It’s hard to think of anything more objectively cute than a dormouse."
"Now that I’m upright, my thoughts settle like flakes in a snow globe."
"Certainty is a dead space, in which there’s no more room to grow."
"In a world where it’s hard to feel alone, this finally represents solitude."
"The inky hours are also for writing: the scratch and flow of pen on good paper."
"Sleep is not a dead space, but a doorway to a different kind of consciousness."
"The streets were usually unlit, so the only navigable space was home."
"In this borderland between wake and sleep, our ancestors may have experienced a state of being different from any we know."
"Light nowadays can feel like an intruder, carrying with it a unit of information or an obligation."
"We have lost our true instincts for darkness, its invitation to spend some time in the proximity of our dreams."
"Our personal winters are so often accompanied by insomnia: perhaps we’re drawn towards that unique space of intimacy and contemplation, darkness and silence, without really knowing what we’re seeking."
"The greatest wisdom came from people who had endured this particular winter before us."
"Watching winter and really listening to its messages, we learn that effect is often disproportionate to cause."
"Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife."
"The time had come to teach my son to winter. It’s quite a skill to pass on."
"We travelled through the dark moments together."
"Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit."
"For his own part, he employed one Peter Corbet, a wolf hunter, and tasked him with ensuring the death of all the wolves in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire."
"Their elimination in Scotland is thought to have come nearly two centuries later, with the last wolf reportedly being killed in 1680."
"There are an estimated 300,000 across the world, and despite their persecution, their numbers are rising."
"Whether we see them or not, they are a symbol of low cunning and the rapacious hunger of winter."
"They endure as a reminder of the wild potential of the lands outside our busy, well-lit towns and cities."
"Wolves are the ultimate fairy-tale villain, cropping up wherever there is a vulnerable creature to be devoured, be it a little pig or a grandmother."
"In winter, those hungers become especially fierce."
"Like my fleeting friend, the wolf tracker, we can learn to respect our wolves."
"I have often heard talk of the nostalgia of snow, the way that we always imagine our childhoods to have been snowier than they actually were."
"Snow creates that quality of awe in the face of a power greater than ours."
"Snow epitomises the aesthetic notion of the sublime, in which greatness and beauty couple to overcome you—a small, frail human—entirely."
"The same snowy segue takes us into John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, where during a Christmas break, the young hero Kay Harker witnesses a similar seepage in time."
"Snow vanquishes the mundane. It brings the everyday to a grinding halt and delays our ability to address our dreary responsibilities."
"Snow opens up the reign of the children, high on their unexpected liberty, daredevil and impervious to the cold."
"In children’s literature, snowfall is the trigger for tables to turn."
"In the depths of our winters, we are all wolfish."
"Underneath this chaos and clutter lies a longing for more elemental things—love, beauty, comfort, a short spell of oblivion once in a while."
"A world of rabbits ruled by stoats would be nearer the mark."
"The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape."