Autumn Quotes

There is a particular kind of afternoon sun that exists only in autumn. A golden light drapes itself over the world of that hour. It falls through the afternoon sky, fine and faint as a swirl of cigarette smoke caught in the wind, nearly transparent. So sweet, that light, insisting softly, goldly against the windows.

~ Ayana Mathis

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

~ Sharon Kay Penman

There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees - as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.

~ Ruth Ahmed

Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?

~ John B. Tabb

...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

~ Daphne Du Maurier

Love is like a season,it ebbs and it flows,sometimes we're like Summer, Fall and Winter,but it's Spring that I long to know.

~ Anthony T Hincks

I could feel the bite of the autumn air, warning us all of the harsh winter that was on its way.

~ Jennifer Starzec

We were letting go of October, relinquishing color,readying ourselves for streets lacquered with ice,the town closed like a walnut, locked inside the cold.

~ Mark Perlberg

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

~ Elizabeth Bowen

In the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.

~ Kahlil Gibran

As the trees turned red, then white, then naked as pitchforks, Margot and Xiao Chen immersed themselves in several forests' worth of pages, and I watched, tortured, as brick after brick of a new development was laid on the wasteland of Midtown West like slabs of gold bullion.

~ Carolyn Jess-Cooke

Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart. The sun departs the sky in winding sheets of gaudy cloud; anguish enters the city, a sense of the bitterest regret, a nostalgia for things we never knew, anguish of the turn of the year, the time of impotent yearning, the inconsolable season.

~ Angela Carter

These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself.In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed; in the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory; and in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.

~ T.h. White

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.

~ Elizabeth Gaskell

I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains, mournful as widows. Fur and moss grew thicker than usual. Cold rains came, driven sideways through the trees by north winds, and snows followed.

~ Sarah Micklem

And you say Paris is gay, but it has its down times. You say go in the spring and not the summer, because watching the autumn creep through the Rive Gauche preparing for winter is hard.

~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Sometimes I ask myself how autumn smells? My answer: it's the smell of the autumn leaves firework and red wine.

~ Bryanna Reid

Autumn leaves under frozen soles,Hungry hands turning soft and old,My hero cried as we stood out their in the cold,Like these autumn leaves I don't have nothing to holdAutumn leaves how faded now,that smile that i've lost, well i've found some how,Because you still live on in my fathers eyes,These autumn leaves, oh these autumn leaves, oh these autumn leaves are yours tonight.

~ Paolo Nutini

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid’s pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds.

~ J.k. Rowling

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.

~ Stephen King

[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

~ Wallace Stegner

Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.

~ David Mitchell

Autumn stomps around outside the houselike an annoying little sister, tappingon all the shutters, kicking up the pilesof leaves you rake, pretending to howllike a wolf. But I'm glad she's here,so we can cuss at Summer together,pretending we don't even remember her name.

~ Karen Finneyfrock

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

~ Sylvia Plath

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.

~ Hal Borland

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

~ Nora Ephron

He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.

~ Michael Montoure

I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.

~ Michael Caine

When she had arranged her household affairs, she came to the library and bade me follow her. Then, with the mirror still swinging against her knees, she led me through the garden and the wilderness down to a misty wood. It being autumn, the trees were tinted gloriously in dusky bars of colouring. The rowan, with his amber leaves and scarlet berries, stood before the brown black-spotted sycamore; the silver beech flaunted his golden coins against my poverty; firs, green and fawn-hued, slumbered in hazy gossamer. No bird carolled, although the sun was hot. Marina noted the absence of sound, and without prelude of any kind began to sing from the ballad of the Witch Mother: about the nine enchanted knots, and the trouble-comb in the lady's knotted hair, and the master-kid that ran beneath her couch. Every drop of my blood froze in dread, for whilst she sang her face took on the majesty of one who traffics with infernal powers. As the shade of the trees fell over her, and we passed intermittently out of the light, I saw that her eyes glittered like rings of sapphires.(The Basilisk)

~ R. Murray Gilchrist

By now, at the end of a sloping alley, we had reached the shores of a vast marsh. Some unknown quality in the sparkling water had stained its whole bed a bright yellow. Green leaves, of such a sour brightness as almost poisoned to behold, floated on the surface of the rush-girdled pools. Weeds like tempting veils of mossy velvet grew beneath in vivid contrast with the soil. Alders and willows hung over the margin. From where we stood a half-submerged path of rough stones, threaded by deep swift channels, crossed to the very centre.(The Basilisk)

~ R. Murray Gilchrist

Mothman flew away from town, like a giant bat, and then disappeared from sight behind a thicket of skeletal autumn trees.

~ Don Roff

Change is coming, she whispered to the bugs bouncing off her window. You can’t escape it.

~ A. Lynn

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

Autumn...the year's last, loveliest s

~ John Howard Bryant

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

~ Rainbow Rowell

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.

~ Jim Bishop

Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.

~ Rémy De Gourmont