21
" For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it.
How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you”. "
― Joyce Carol Oates
24
" LED lighting has its place: cold, detached, hollow places like office buildings, factories, fast food chains and public schools - places full of humans but no human emotions. LED lighting really belongs in the apathy of the digital age, where science and technology rules over friendship, love and freedom. Incandescent light bulbs have a warm yellow-orange glow like the glow of a nice fireplace, where friends and family might sit and talk together or where children might open Christmas presents, a glow that can project celluloid films and bring back old memories, a glow that can light the text of a paperback novel. Something that beautiful, with that much power, could never last very long in a time as depressing and uncertain as the 21st century. "
26
" Up there in that room, as I see it, is the reading and the thinking-through, a theory of rivers, of trees moving, of falling light. Here on the river, as I lurch against a freshening of the current, is the practice of rivers. In navigating by the glow of the Milky Way, the practice of light. In steadying with a staff, the practice of wood. "
― Barry Lopez , About This Life
37
" He poured a splash of liquid into a second cup. “Come in and warm yerself by the fire.”
Ariana walked deeper into the room, toward the glow of the hearth. It’s heat enveloped her skin and eased away the chill with such expediency, she almost sighed.
Connor appeared beside her with a metal cup extended. “I canna sleep often myself.”
She closed her fingers around the cool surface and glanced at the dark liquid within. A sharp scent hit her nostrils.
“Whisky,” Connor said.
He was perfection in the firelight. Shadows etched his jaw while the light softened his face, his lips. The powerful lines of his chest were visible at the neck of his leine, as well as a dark peppering of small curling black hairs.
“Whisky,” Ariana said with a forced stare at the cup instead of him. “Of course. I drink this all the time.”
“Aye, I knew that about ye. When I first saw ye, I thought, ‘Now there’s a lass who can handle her whisky.’” Connor winked at her with disarming playfulness. “It’ll do ye some good. Take off the chill and settle yer thoughts.”
“Why do you assume my thoughts are unsettled?” she asked.
He took a swallow from his cup. “Because sleep comes easily to those without weight on their minds.”
Ariana took a careful sip from her own cup, the way she’d seen men at the card tables drink. The liquid burned like sin down her throat and caught in her chest.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard several times to keep from sputtering.
Though she’d hoped to keep her reaction discreet, the grin on Connor’s face told her he saw through her guise.
“It’s good.” Her voice came out in a croak and Connor laughed. It was a warm, rich sound and she found it terribly pleasing.
His eyes crinkled. “Now that we’ve discovered yer love of whisky, why dinna ye tell me what’s got yer thoughts heavy? "
― Madeline Martin , Highland Spy (The Mercenary Maidens, #1)
39
" When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream.
A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy.
I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened. "
― , Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
40
" As a youth, I listened to the rain from the bowers of pleasure houses,
Red silk drapes translucent in the glow of candlelight.
In my prime, I listened to the rain as a traveler,
The sky low, the river broad, the calls of the wild geese harsh and cold.
Now, grey at the temples, I listen to the rain beneath the eaves of an abandoned cloister.
Has mine been a futile life?
I have no answers, only the sound of raindrops upon worn stone steps,
And long hours yet to pass before the light of dawn. "
― Sherry Thomas , My Beautiful Enemy (The Heart of Blade Duology, #2)