“
And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
My mind argued with itself about whether to adhere to proper etiquette or whether to fling aside all modesty and throw my arms around him. My feet chose the latter before my mind had a chance to settle it. I flew off the stool and landed in his embrace. Freezing rain drenched his coat and shirt. His arms wrapped around me tighter, and there was nothing so right as being pressed against Nathaniel Strider.
”
”
Tess Oliver (Camille (Camille, #1))
“
Bird boy kept us out there in the freezing rain while he yammered about the Red One this and Red One that. Darius got Zoey in here despite his help".
”
”
P.C. Cast
“
You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303
”
”
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
“
There is something joyful about storms that interrupt routine. Snow or freezing rain suddenly releases you from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules. And unlike illness, it is largely a corporate rather than individual experience. One can almost hear a unified sigh rise from the nearby city and surrounding countryside where Nature has intervened to give respite to the weary humans slogging it out within her purview. All those affected this way are united by a mutual excuse, and the heart is suddenly and unexpectedly a little giddy. There will be no apologies needed for not showing up to some commitment or other. Everyone understands and shares in this singular justification, and the sudden alleviation of the pressure to produce makes the heart merry.
”
”
William Paul Young (The Shack)
“
[..]Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."
Yes? Why is that?"
Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. [..]
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
I walk to Oxford Street and climb on the number 8. It's freezing and it starts to rain and it's the ugliest bus I've ever seen, rattling down the ugliest streets, in the ugliest city, in the ugliest country, in the ugliest of all possible worlds.
”
”
David Thewlis (The Late Hector Kipling)
“
Grief is like rain. When you’re standing in the street, drenched and freezing cold, it’s hard to remember what it’s like to feel warm and dry. It’s hard to imagine feeling warm and dry ever again. But some people are umbrellas. And they keep away the worst of the storm.
”
”
Elle McNicoll (Show Us Who You Are)
“
The freezing rain sifts down, handfuls of shining rice thrown by some unseen celebrant. Wherever it hits, it crystallizes into a granulated coating of ice.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Stone Mattress)
“
It's Valentine's Day,
and in the street
there's freezing rain,
and slush, and sleet,
the wind is fierce,
the skies are gray,
I don't think I'll
go out today.
But here inside,
the weather's warm,
there is no trace
of wind or storm,
and you just made
the morning shine—
you said you'd be
my valentine.
”
”
Jack Prelutsky (It's Valentine's Day (Mulberry Read-Alones))
“
It is better to dance in the rain than to freeze in the storm.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
There is something joyful about storms that interrupt routine. Snow or freezing rain suddenly releases you from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules.
”
”
William Paul Young (The Shack)
“
To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day -- that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind -- one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.
”
”
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
“
to Beth>> Your meet-cute would have gone like this, “Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “Sorry, I have a boyfriend.” Also, I feel like I should point out that it was freezing rain. Freezing rain isn’t cute.
”
”
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments: Is there such a thing as love before first sight? The romantic comedy we all need to read in 2025)
“
Listen to me and listen to me good,” she ground out. “You are an asshole. You don’t tell me what to do, ever. The day you control my life, well, that day is when hell freezes over. I’m not some weak little wife type, asshole, and I don’t need a man to control me or tell me what to do. If you ever try to pull this shit again I’ll show you weak when they have to surgically remove my shoe from your ass. When you walk in the door of my house after you find a way back there, you have five minutes to pack up your things and get the hell out or you’ll need that surgery. I want you to get on a plane, take your miserable, bitchy little bald ass out of my life, and don’t ever come near me again. Do you hear me?
”
”
Laurann Dohner (Propositioning Mr. Raine (Riding the Raines, #1))
“
I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven - the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it - it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition - make haste - oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still - ubi saeoa indignatio ulterius cor lacerate nequit; the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them ("The Lifted Veil")
”
”
George Eliot (The Lifted Veil (Fantasy and Horror Classics))
“
Even as a boy Jack had loved the smell of the ground softening in the thaw and coming back to life. Not this spring. A damp, moldy dreariness, something like loneliness, had settled over the homestead. At first Jack did not know its source. Maybe it was only his own mood. Perhaps it was the spring weather, with overcast skies and freezing rain that soaked through the cabin walls. Mabel, too, seemed beset by a morose restlessness.
”
”
Eowyn Ivey (The Snow Child)
“
A friend tells a story about taking his ten-year-old son to a Jets game. The game was being played during a driving rain on a freezing cold day, and the Jets lost by twenty points to a team they were supposed to beat. As they headed toward the exits, the boy looked up, with tears in his eyes, and asked, 'Dad, why are we Jets fans?
”
”
Joe Queenan (True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans)
“
The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn't mere rain or the wind freezing wind - this was a conspiracy of the elements.
”
”
Georges Simenon (Maigret is Afraid (Inspector Maigret, 42))
“
He doesn't tell the snow to that and become tain, or the rain to freeze itself into snow. He says, essentially: do your thing. Do the thing that you love to do, that you've been created to do.
”
”
Shauna Niequist (Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living)
“
For some days, now, the termperature had wavered between freezing and thawing and it was difficult to tell whether the sediment thickening the atmostphere was rain or sleet or smog. Through the murk the dull red eye of a sun that had scarcely been able to drag itself above roof level all day was sinking blearily beneath the horizon, spreading a rusty stain across the snow-covered surfaces. Read pathetic fallacy weather.
”
”
David Lodge (Changing Places (The Campus Trilogy, #1))
“
It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Wild Apples)
“
Irimiás scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.
”
”
László Krasznahorkai (Satantango)
“
The world might be sunny-side up today.
The big ball of yellow might be spilling into the clouds, runny and yolky and blurring into the bluest sky, bright with cold hope and false promises about fond memories, real families, hearty breakfasts, stacks of pancakes drizzled in maple syrup sitting on a plate in a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it’s dark and wet today, whistling wind so sharp it stings the skin off the knuckles of grown men. Maybe it’s snowing, maybe it’s raining, I don’t know maybe it’s freezing it’s hailing it’s a hurricane slip slipping into a tornado and the earth is quaking apart to make room for our mistakes.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
“
Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?” “Almost,” Harding said. “Hang on.” “And believe me, it’ll be fast. If you map complex systems on a fitness landscape, you find the behavior can move so fast that fitness can drop precipitously. It doesn’t require asteroids or diseases or anything else. It’s just behavior that suddenly emerges, and turns out to be fatal to the creatures that do it. My idea was that dinosaurs—being complex creatures—might have undergone some of these behavioral changes. And that led to their extinction.
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
—
If love wants you; if you’ve been melted
down to stars, you will love
with lungs and gills, with warm blood
and cold. With feathers and scales.
Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy
you’ll want to breathe with the spiral
calls of birds, while your lashing tail
still gropes for the waes. You’ll try
to haul your weight from simple sea
to gravity of land. Caught by the tide,
in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments
suffocating in both water and air.
If love wants you, suddently your past is
obsolete science. Old maps,
disproved theories, a diorama.
The moment our bodies are set to spring open.
The immanence that reassembles matter
passes through us then disperses
into time and place:
the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons.
The mother who hears her child crying upstairs
and suddenly feels her dress
wet with milk.
Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog
tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew
before we were loved there,
the places left fallow when we’re born,
waiting for experience to find its way
into us. The night crossing, on deck
in the dark car. On the beach wehre
night reshaped your face.
In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet,
moss like velvet spread over splintered forms.
The instant spray freezes
in air above the falls, a gasp of ice.
We rise, hearing our names
called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon
an escutcheon on the shield of sky.
The current that passes through us, radio waves,
electric lick. The billions of photons that pass
through film emulsion every second, the single
submicroscopic crystal struck
that becomes the phograph.
We look and suddenly the world
looks back.
A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky.
—
But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate
by the rear-view mirror
of the moon; if we continue to reach
both for salt and for the sweet white
nibs of grass growing closest to earth;
if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also
driving through the canyon at night,
all around us the hidden glow of limestone
erased by darkness; if still we sish
we’d waited for morning,
we will know ourselves
nowhere.
Not in the mirrors of waves
or in the corrading stream,
not in the wavering
glass of an apartment building,
not in the looming light of night lobbies
or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen
or in the motel where we watched meteors
from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open,
turned stars to rain.
We will become
indigestible. Afraid
of choking on fur
and armour, animals
will refuse the divided longings
in our foreing blue flesh.
—
In your hands, all you’ve lost,
all you’ve touched.
In the angle of your head,
every vow and
broken vow. In your skin,
every time you were disregarded,
every time you were received.
Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field,
mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem.
The branch that’s released when the bird lifts
or lands. In a summer kitchen.
On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.
”
”
Anne Michaels
“
In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
Trees are like people and give the answers to the way of Man. They grow from the top down. Children, like treetops, have flexibility of youth, and sway more than larger adults at the bottom. They are more vulnerable to the elements, and are put to the test of survival by life's strong winds, rain, freezing cold, and hot sun. Constantly challenged. As they mature, they journey down the tree, strengthening the family unit until one day they have become big hefty branches. In the stillness below, having weathered the seasons, they now relax in their old age, no longer subject to the stress from above. It's always warmer and more enclosed at the base of the tree. The members remain protected and strong as they bear the weight and give support to the entire tree. They have the endurance.
”
”
Ralph Helfer (Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived)
“
The time has come for tears to start again,
Those faithful tears that always ease the pain.
Release the raging rivers of my soul!
Let me drown and then rise up again.
Let me drown until the river dries,
until the numbing coldness settles in.
See the world once more with empty eyes,
no spark of warmth can penetrate the skin.
Crash the thunder! Howl the wind!
Freeze my heart and beat the driving rain!
Let me know these dreams are empty lies.
Let me die and come to life again.
In the silent darkness of my mind,
let me wonder who you really are.
Let me feel that you were just a dream.
That fades on waking like the morning star
”
”
Bernie Morris (Bobby's Girl)
“
The rain is colder than I expect—which is ridiculous, since it’s March. My cheeks are freezing by the time we go two blocks, my hair has a sodden weight on my shoulder. My glasses are so wet I need to shove them in a pocket. I threw Mom’s pullover windbreaker over my sweatshirt before leaving the house, thinking it would be waterproof, but I am so wrong.
By the time I make the final turn for the church, I wonder if I’m stupid for being out here. It’s pouring so hard that a haze has formed around the streetlight, and I can barely see anything through the darkness.
My sneakers squish in the grass. I get to the spot where we sat for the last two nights.
And of course he’s not there.
I sigh. Only a complete moron would go meet in the rain.
Then Texy woofs and bounces on her front paws.
I turn, and it’s like I’m in a chick flick. His shadowed figure lopes across the grass.
Okay, maybe the dark and rain make it more like a horror movie than a romantic comedy, BUT STILL.
He draws to a stop in front of me. He had the sense to wear a heavy, waterproof coat over his hoodie, but the hood is soaked and rain drips down his cheeks.
“Hey,” he says, his voice a little loud over the rain.
I’m blushing. I tell my cheeks to knock it off. “Hey.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d show up, but I didn’t have a way to text you …”
“I had the same thought process.
”
”
Brigid Kemmerer (More Than We Can Tell (Letters to the Lost, #2))
“
In the summer the rain seeps into the cracks in the bricks, then when the temperature slips below zero the moisture freezes to ice, and the bricks break. She will remember that that’s how it felt to grow up as the little sister of a dead big brother. A childhood that was one long, desperate attempt not to be liquid, not to seek out the cracks in your parents.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (Beartown (Beartown, #1))
“
I've got a couple of other ideas. For instance, about the viscosity of sound. Sounds spread over surfaces, slide across polished floors, flow in gutters, pile up in corners, snap on ridges, fall like rain on mucous membranes, swarm on plexuses, flame up on body hair, and flutter on skin like warm air over summer fields. There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more. There are words which do not reach their mark and roll up into roving balls, swollen with danger, like lightning does sometimes when it fails to find its target. There are words which freeze...
”
”
René Daumal (A Night of Serious Drinking)
“
Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze. When
”
”
Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff)
“
Telegraph Road
A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a pack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
Made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came riding down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the telegraph road
Then came the mines - then came the ore
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river ...
And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze
People driving home from the factories
There's six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow ...
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
All the way down the telegraph road
You know I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights
When life was just a bet on a race between the lights
You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair
Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care
But believe in me baby and I'll take you away
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
'Cos I've run every red light on memory lane
I've seen desperation explode into flames
And I don't want to see it again ...
From all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed
All the way down the telegraph road
”
”
Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits - 1982-91)
“
I consider these things idly. Each one of them seems the same size as all the others. Not one seems preferable. Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered. I look out at the dusk and think about its being winter. The snow falling, gently, effortlessly, covering everything in soft crystal, the mist of moonlight before a rain, blurring the outlines, obliterating color. Freezing to death is painless, they say, after the first chill. You lie back in the snow like an angel made by children and go to sleep. Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in midair under the chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us. Get it over, she says. I'm tired of this melodrama, I'm tired of keeping silent. There's no one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished. As I'm standing up I hear the black van. I hear it before I see it; blended with the twilight, it appears out of its own sound like a solidification, a clotting of the night. It turns into the driveway, stops. I can just make out the white eye, the two wings. The paint must be phosphorescent. Two men detach themselves from the shape of it, come up the front steps, ring the bell. I hear the bell toll, ding-dong, like the ghost of a cosmetics woman, down in the hall. Worse is coming, then. I've
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1))
“
Depending on where it falls, the prognosis for a water molecule varies widely. If it lands in fertile soil it will be soaked up by plants or reevaporated directly within hours or days. If it finds its way down to the groundwater, however, it may not see sunlight again for many years—thousands if it gets really deep. When you look at a lake, you are looking at a collection of molecules that have been there on average for about a decade. In the ocean the residence time is thought to be more like a hundred years. Altogether about 60 percent of water molecules in a rainfall are returned to the atmosphere within a day or two. Once evaporated, they spend no more than a week or so—Drury says twelve days—in the sky before falling again as rain. Evaporation is a swift process, as you can easily gauge by the fate of a puddle on a summer’s day. Even something as large as the Mediterranean would dry out in a thousand years if it were not continually replenished. Such an event occurred a little under six million years ago and provoked what is known to science as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. What happened was that continental movement closed the Strait of Gibraltar. As the Mediterranean dried, its evaporated contents fell as freshwater rain into other seas, mildly diluting their saltiness—indeed, making them just dilute enough to freeze over larger areas than normal. The enlarged area of ice bounced back more of the Sun’s heat and pushed Earth into an ice age. So at least the theory goes. What is certainly true, as far as we can tell, is that a little change in the Earth’s dynamics can have repercussions beyond our imagining. Such an event, as we shall see a little further on, may even have created us.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
There is something joyful about storms, that interrupt routine. Snow or freezing rain suddenly releases you from expectations, performance demands, and the tyranny of appointments and schedules.
And unlike illness, it is largely a corporate, rather than individual experience. One could almost hear a unified sigh rise from the nearby city and surrounding countryside, where nature has intervened to give respite to the weary humans slogging it out within her purview.
All those affected this way are united by a mutual excuse, and the heart is suddenly, and unexpectedly, a little giddy. There will be no apologies needed for not showing up to some commitment or other. Everyone understands and shares in this singular justification, and the sudden alleviation of the pressure to produce makes the heart merry.
...
Even if it's hardly more than a day or two, somehow each person feels like the master of his or her own world, simply because those little droplets of water freeze as they hit the ground. Even commonplace activities become extraordinary. Routine choices become adventures and are often experienced with a sense of heightened clarity.
”
”
William Paul Young
“
Below, the land, the pale dunes, the black mountains shaped like spears, like towers, like fortresses. On the horizon one volcano pouring its crimson plume into the air, fierce, uncompromising, and real. A wild land, a cruel land, a land to catch you out, bury you in sandstorm, broil you under the sun, freeze you under the stars, dehydrate and suffocate you in the heat with its low oxygen count. A land to thrill and humble you in that single unit after the rains, when all the barren sand is bright with green, and ferns spring toward the mountains and cover their flanks like a rolling ancient sea.
”
”
Tanith Lee (Biting the Sun (Four-BEE, #1-2))
“
Recovery
The time has come for tears to start again,
Those faithful tears that always ease the pain.
Release the raging rivers of my soul!
Let me drown and then rise up again.
Let me drown until the river dries,
Until the numbing coldness settles in.
See the world once more with empty eyes,
No spark of warmth can penetrate the skin.
Crash the thunder! Howl the wind!
Freeze my heart and beat the driving rain!
Let me know these dreams are empty lies.
Let me die and come to life again.
In the silent darkness of my mind,
Let me wonder who you really are.
Let me feel that you were just a dream.
That fades on waking like the morning star…
”
”
Bernie Morris (Bobby's Girl)
“
It could snow
We don’t take care. The end of November came without coldness, with haunting and limp rains, pretty much leaves still laying anywhere on the sidewalks. It comes a morning with another grey, compact, closed, air changes its texture. Under the pharmacy green cross the thermometer sticks, in red, two degrees. The number, a bit blurred thins down in the space. We didn’t expect it, but it grows, far inside us, the little sentence. It comes to the lips like a forgotten song: “It could snow …” We should not dare to mention it in loud voice, it is still so much autumn, all could finish in a stupid freezing sudden shower, in a fog of boredom. But the idea of a possible snow came back, it’s what matters. No downhill in a sledge-trash-bag, no snowman, no children shouting,no pictures of landscape metamorphosis. Largely best then all that, because the essential snow is inside the unformulated. Before. Something we didn’t know we knew. Before snow, before love, the same lack, the same dimmed grey which days’ triteness creates pretending to suffocate.
We shall cross somebody:
- This time it’s almost winter!
- Yes we start to be crestfallen!
Workers hang pieces of tinsel. We didn’t say too much. Especially do not frighten away the slight shade of the idea. The red thermometer went down, one degree. It could snow.
”
”
Philippe Delerm (Ma grand-mère avait les mêmes: les dessous affriolants des petites phrases)
“
For that half-hour in the hospital delivery room I was intimate with immensity, for that half-minute before birth I held her hands and for that duration we three were undivided, I felt the blood of her pulse as we gripped hands, felt her blood beat in the rhythm that reached into the baby as she slipped into the doctor's hands, and for a few days we touched that immensity, we saw through her eyes to an immense intimacy, saw through to where she had come from, I felt important being next to her, and the feeling lasted when we entered our car for the drive home, thinking to myself that we weren't to be trusted with our baby, the feeling lasting while I measured us against the landscape, the February rain, the pewter sky, and then the rain freezing to the roadway, the warmth of the interior of the car with its unbreakable transparent sky dome and doors, until the car spun on the ice in the lane and twirled so that I could take an hour to describe how I threw up my hands in anguish as the baby slipped from her arms and whipped into the face of her mother reflected in the glass door, and she caught the baby back into her arms as the car glided to a stop in its usual place at the end of the drive, and nothing but silence and a few drops of blood at a nostril suggested that we would now be intimate with the immensities of death ("Interim")
”
”
William S. Wilson (Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka)
“
At night the wind moaned. The gnarled and stunted tree trunks creaked and groaned and forced Yossarian’s thoughts each morning, even before he was fully awake, back on Kid Sampson’s skinny legs bloating and decaying, as systematically as a ticking clock, in the icy rain and wet sand all through the blind, cold, gusty October nights. After Kid Sampson’s legs, he would think of pitiful, whimpering Snowden freezing to death in the rear section of the plane, holding his eternal, immutable secret concealed inside his quilted, armor-plate flak suit until Yossarian had finished sterilizing and bandaging the wrong wound on his leg, and then spilling it out suddenly all over the floor.
”
”
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
“
This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
The beauty of San Francisco is in these windows of redemptive splendor, we learned, the days when the fog “burns off,” as they say, and gives way to a piercing, almost perversely joyous sunshine. New Yorkers joke about being in an abusive relationship with the city. In San Francisco, I understood this. We were constantly being pummeled by clouds and rain, then promptly apologized to by sparkling sunshine. This is the thing the city does best: convinces you, through a blustery string of freezing, gunmetal-grey days, that life is shit, and then, when you least expect it and most need it, it seems to practically shatter open, revealing a crystalline brightness that pings light around, reflects it off of everything, and air-dries the pale, soaked buildings. It was a magic trick that got me every time.
”
”
Nina Renata Aron (Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love)
“
That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, ‘Mother, I’m cold.’ Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There was a sudden click, the red light of the heater lit up, the bed and blanket warmer began radiating life-giving heat again and I felt myself thaw out, emerge from the scary limbo which marks one’s descent into another dimension, and the shadow faded out from the rocking chair right in front of me into complete transparency and the icy presence in the bed faded away to nothingness.
”
”
Kiran Manral (The Face At the Window)
“
By now the window of the bar is visible, glowing ahead of them, but there is no sound, not a single word to be heard, as if the place were deserted, not a soul … but now, someone is playing the harmonica … Irimias scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to this spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees from one another, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.
”
”
László Krasznahorkai (Satantango)
“
I’m talking about all the order in the natural world,” Malcolm said. “And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh,
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
I spin around in a circle and sing, “Do you want to build a snowman?” And then we’re both giggling again.
“You’re going to get us kicked out of here,” he warns.
I grab his hands and make him spin around with me as fast as I can. “Quit acting like you really belong in a nursing home, old man!” I yell.
He drops my hands and we both stumble. Then he grabs a fistful of snow off the ground and starts to pack it into a ball. “Old man, huh? I’ll show you an old man!”
I dart away from him, slipping and sliding in the snow. “Don’t you dare, John Ambrose McClaren!”
He chases after me, laughing and breathing hard. He manages to grab me around the waist and raises his arm like he’s going to put the snowball down my back, but at the last second he releases me. His eyes go wide. “Oh my God. Are you wearing my grandma’s nightgown under your coat?”
Giggling, I say, “Wanna see? It’s really racy.” I start to unzip my coat. “Wait, turn around first.”
Shaking his head, John says, “This is weird,” but he obeys. As soon as his back is turned, I snatch a handful of snow, form it into a ball, and put it in my coat pocket.
“Okay, turn around.”
John turns, and I lob the snowball directly at his head. It hits him in the eye. “Ouch!” he yelps, wiping it with his coat sleeve.
I gasp and move toward him. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Are you okay--”
John’s already scooping up more snow and lunging toward me. And so begins our snowball fight. We chase each other around, and I get in another great hit square in his back. We call a truce when I nearly slip and fall on my butt. Luckily, John catches me just in time. He doesn’t let go right away. We stare at each other for a second, his arm around my waist. There’s a snowflake on his eyelashes. He says, “If I didn’t know you were still hung up on Kavinsky, I would kiss you right now.”
I shiver. Up until Peter, the most romantic thing that ever happened to me was with John Ambrose McClaren, in the rain, with the soccer balls. Now this. How strange that I’ve never even dated John, and he’s in two of my most romantic moments.
John releases me. “You’re freezing. Let’s go back inside.
”
”
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
“
His grip tightened and he closed the distance between us, his mouth catching mine in a kiss that made my aching heart throb with the most painful kind of hope. I gripped his shirt in my fists and dragged him closer as I kissed him like the sky might cave in if I didn’t, even though it was more likely that it would if I did.
Thunder crashed like an explosion overhead, freezing cold rain pelted down on us and lightning slammed into the ground behind us. But I didn’t care. I would gladly take the rage of the heavens in payment for this moment in his arms.
Darius pulled me closer, growling hungrily as his tongue pushed into my mouth and he kissed me savagely, filthily, desperately.
I pushed up onto my tiptoes, my body pressing flush to his as I wound my arms round his neck and my heart pounded to a brutal beat like it wanted to force its way out ofmy chest and meet with his.
Lightning struck the ground so close that a crackle of electricity danced up my spine. I flinched, but my grip on Darius only tightened.
I dropped the barriers on my magic and Darius’s power flooded through me on a tide of ecstasy as we merged our essences together. We were meant to be together like this, it was painted beneath my skin and through my veins, even my magic ached for him and yearned for the caress of his power.
Thunder boomed and I growled in defiance, lifting my hand to cast a shield of solid air magic around us, cutting off the storm completely. Darius’s magic flowed alongside mine into the shield, the strength of our will blocking out the will of the stars.
The earth rocked savagely beneath our feet and we fell. Darius kept ahold of me as he hit the ground on his back and I tumbled aside for a moment, but I wasn’t going to let them drive us apart. I shoved myself to my knees, crawling over his legs as he pushed up on his elbows and kissed me again.
His fingers slid through my wet hair and his stubble grazed my skin as he kissed me so hard it was bruising, punishing, branding and yet it wasn’t enough.
My heart was aching, tears pricking the backs of my eyes as I fought to keep hold of him while the storm hammered against our magic, determined to tear us apart again.
I poured magic from my body to hold the shield as rain slammed against it so hard that the air rattled around us.
Darius dragged me against him and I could feel how much he wanted me in every hard line and ridge of his body.
We were both drenched, covered in mud and utterly incapable of giving one shit about it.
Lightning slammed into the shield and I gasped as it almost buckled, breaking our kiss as I looked up at the black sky above us. More lightning split the clouds apart, striking the ground all around us again and again, making the earth rock even more violently.
As a second bolt hit our shield, I almost lost control of it and I could feel my power waning as I threw everything I had into maintaining it.
We only had seconds before it was going to collapse and I reached out to catch Darius’s jaw in my grip, looking into his dark eyes with a pang of longing.
“I’m sorry I did this to us,” I breathed. I might not have been sure everything between us was fixed yet, but I was beginning to believe it could be and I was starting to think I’d made the wrong choice when I’d been offered it.
“It wasn’t you,” he replied, pain flickering though his gaze.
“It was both of us,” I disagreed, tears mixing with the rain on my cheeks.
(Tory)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5))
“
At the end of the lane Elizabeth put down her side of the trunk and sank down wearily beside Lucinda upon its hard top, emotionally exhausted. A wayward chuckle bubbled up inside her, brought on by exhaustion, fright, defeat, and the last remnants of triumph over having gotten just a little of her own back from the man who’d ruined her life. The only possible explanation for Ian Thornton’s behavior today was that he was a complete madman.
With a shake of her head Elizabeth made herself stop thinking of him. At the moment she had so many new worries she hardly knew how to begin to cope. She glanced sideways at her stalwart duenna, and an amused smile touched her lips as she recalled Lucinda’s actions at the cottage. On the one hand, Lucinda rejected all emotional displays as totally unseemly-yet at the same time she herself was possessed of the most formidable temper Elizabeth had ever witnessed. It was as if Lucinda did not regard her own outbursts of ire as emotional. Without the slightest hesitation or regret Lucinda could verbally flay a wrongdoer into small, bite-sized pieces and then mentally stamp him into the ground and grind him beneath the heel of her sturdy shoe.
On the other hand, were Elizabeth to exhibit the smallest bit of fear right now over their daunting predicament, Lucinda would instantly stiffen up with disapproval and deliver one of her sharp reprimands.
Cognizant of that, Elizabeth glanced worriedly at the sky, where black clouds were rolling in, heralding a storm; but when she spoke she sounded deliberately and absurdly bland. “I believe it’s starting to rain, Lucinda,” she remarked while cold drizzle began to slap the leaves of the tree over their heads.
“So it would seem,” said Lucinda. She opened her umbrella with a smart snap, holding it over them both.
“It’s fortunate you have your umbrella.”
“We aren’t likely to drown from a little rain.”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
Elizabeth drew a steadying breath, looking around at the harsh Scottish cliffs. In the tone of one asking someone’s opinion on a rhetorical question, Elizabeth said, “Do you suppose there are wolves out here?”
“I believe,” Lucinda replied, “they probably constitute a larger threat to our health at present than the rain.”
The sun was setting, and the early spring air had a sharp bite in it; Elizabeth was almost positive they’d be freezing by nightfall. “It’s a bit chilly.”
“Rather.”
“We have warmer clothes in the trunks, though.”
“I daresay we won’t be too uncomfortable, in that case.”
Elizabeth’s wayward sense of humor chose that unlikely moment to assert itself. “No, we shall be snug as can be while the wolves gather around us.”
“Quite.”
Hysteria, hunger, and exhaustion-combined with Lucinda’s unswerving calm and her earlier unprecedented entry into the cottage with umbrella flailing-were making Elizabeth almost giddy. “Of course, if the wolves realize how hungry we are, there’s every change they’ll give us a wide berth.”
“A cheering possibility.”
“We’ll build a fire,” Elizabeth said, her lips twitching. “That will keep them at bay, I believe.” When Lucinda remained silent for several moments, occupied with her own thoughts, Elizabeth confided with an odd surge of happiness. “Do you know something, Lucinda? I don’t think I would have missed today for anything.”
Lucinda’s thin gray brows shot up, and she cast a dubious sideways glance at Elizabeth.
“I realize that must sound extremely peculiar, but can you imagine how absolutely exhilarating it was to have that man at the point of a gun for just a few minutes? Do you find that-odd?” Elizabeth asked when Lucinda stared straight ahead in angry, thoughtful silence.
“What I find off,” she said in a tone of frosty disapproval mingled with surprise, “is that you evoke such animosity in that man.”
“I think he’s quite demented.”
“I would have said embittered.”
“About what?”
“That is an interesting question.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
But, as discouraged as Washington was, he was not prepared to accept defeat, not yet. The American Army was on the verge of collapse, and in desperate need of a victory in order to turn the tide in their favor. The crossing of the Delaware and the taking of Trenton on December twenty-sixth proved to be just such a victory.’ Can you imagine what it must have been like?” Matt said suddenly, looking up from the book.
“Cold,” Q replied. “Really, really cold. They crossed the river at night, in the middle of rain and ice and snow. They must have been freezing.”
“Just like we’re going to be if we let this fire go out,” Tony said as he got up to get another log for the fire.
”
”
Elvira Woodruff (George Washington's Socks (Time Travel Adventure))
“
...
My cosmic desires freeze in an apocalyptical healing
Of agonized thoughts, of betrayed hearts, of dancing daemons
Alleviate my nightmares and calm my deep thunders
...
(Excerpted from Healed by rain, chapter Resilience)
”
”
Claudia Pavel (The odyssey of my lost thoughts)
“
Dr. Meyers is in surgery at the moment.” She reached for a piece of paper and wrote the hospital phone number on it and handed it to me through the little hole. “You can call back during regular business hours and leave a message with his secretary if you’d like.” She spoke to me as if I were either a child or a crazy person.
“Okay.” I took the piece of paper and walked out of the sliding glass doors, staring at the paper in my hands in disbelief. Had she called him? I wondered. Did he tell her to say that to me? There was no way, I thought. I shuffled back to Nate’s truck, still freezing. I turned it on and cranked up the heater and then I cried, that pathetic type of crying like when you pee your pants in kindergarten and you’re filled with a mixture of shame and regret for holding it so long. Then, when everyone starts laughing at your wet jeans, you get angry and want to scream Screw all of you! After the kids stop laughing, you never want to see them again because you’re the only kindergartener who ever peed her pants on the story rug while Ms. Alexander read The Giving Tree for the twelfth time. Everyone else was sitting crisscross applesauce while you were fidgeting about, trying to hold it until the end of the story when the teacher asked what the moral was so you could say, “It’s about being generous to your friends,” even though, later in life, you learn the story is really about a selfish little bastard who sucked the life out of the only thing that gave a shit about him. But you never got the chance for your shining moment because you peed on the story rug, got laughed at, then cried pathetic tears.
Not that that happened to me . . .
”
”
Renee Carlino (After the Rain)
“
Abuse could be a slope as slick as ice after a shower of freezing rain.
”
”
G.M.T. Schuilling (The Watchmaker's Doctor)
“
Prologue It started with rain. A torrential downpour that began around midnight and waged throughout the next day. Occasionally it would ease off for a few minutes, only to come back even stronger. Step two was the temperature drop. Rapid and even, it took only a matter of hours for the mercury to dip below freezing. Once it did, the rain gave way to heavy, wet snowflakes. Dr. Hardy Nicks stood just outside the front door of the Vanderbilt Medical Center. He checked his watch repeatedly while hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, hoping to stay warm. A plume of vapor extended from of his mouth, each breath hanging like a cloud in front of him. As an attending surgeon at the center, Hardy had been on the floor for twenty hours straight. Enormous bags hung beneath each eye and his thinning hair was plastered to his head from being smashed beneath a surgical cap. He hadn't bothered to change out of the light blue scrubs he'd been wearing all day, the shapeless togs doing little to hide his slight frame. An airlock released behind him.
”
”
Dustin Stevens (Ohana)
“
Hardie Boys- Exterior Millwork That Provides Value Over Time
The outdoor areas on your property and the features on it, become the perfect backdrop for your home’s structure. They are also one of the first things that visitors to your property notice. The manner in which these features are designed and the finishing that’s used in them, go a long way in enhancing the overall appeal and value of your property. And so it follows that you ensure resilient materials are used in the work and hire expert technicians for the installation.
When you start researching products and materials for outdoor installations, you will find that wood; iron, aluminum, plaster, brick and foam are commonly used in exterior construction. And this may lead you to believe that they are the best option for these applications. It’s also natural for you to be unsure about using new materials such as the specialized cellular PVC materials we use in our millwork.
Some comparisons
But the fact is that there has been a significant advancement in the manufacture of exterior-grade, manmade materials and cellular PVC is one of them. However, the higher upfront cost can sometimes become the other deterrent for property owners, to opt for this innovative material. Take a look at how the cellular PVC material that we at Hardie Boys, Inc. use stands up against other traditionally-used materials:
1. Weather impact
Materials such as hardwood and metal are strong and durable, but need a significant amount of treatments before they can be used in exterior applications. For instance, untreated and unfinished wood features get affected by moisture and the sun’s rays and eventually crack and crumble.
They can also develop rot or moss; and if these conditions are very severe, extensive repairs or complete replacement of the feature is the only option you are left with. Metal too gets affected by moisture and exposure to rain and frost; and rusts and corrodes over time. In comparison the unique PVC cellular material that we use in our millwork is moisture and heat-resistant and doesn’t corrode over time.
2. Termite damage
Termites are extremely destructive creatures and they can bore through wooden features and cause extensive damage to them. In most cases, replacement is the only option you are left with, which represents a significant expense. Concrete surfaces get affected by the freeze and thaw cycles and crack over a period of time, and you end up spending considerable amounts on repair and replacements. On the other hand, cellular PVC doesn’t get impacted by termites or weather fluctuations at all.
3. Maintenance
While choosing materials for exterior applications, most property owners fail to factor the maintenance costs into the overall cost of the installation. For instance, wood, plaster, foam, brick and concrete require annual mold prevention maintenance as well as sanding and polishing or painting. Metal surfaces have to be sanded, and painted regularly too. In comparison, our cellular PVC material features require only basic cleaning and they won’t warp, crack, fade, corrode, develop rot or mold. In short, this is an extremely low-maintenance option that is worth every penny you spend on initial costs.
We at Hardie Boys, Inc. are the leaders in this space and provide excellent, customized, cellular PVC millwork solutions for residential and commercial settings. For any more information about our exterior millwork,
”
”
Hardie Boys
“
An intellectual crisis is such an invigorating walk in a freezing rain!
”
”
Hud Hudson (A Grotesque in the Garden)
“
The sky is grey, with a thin TV-static drizzle that hangs in the air like it's been freeze-framed.
”
”
Scarlett Thomas (The End of Mr. Y)
“
I can tell you my heart turned to stone at York,” he says to me frankly. “Freezing cold wind and a rain that could cut through you, and the faces of the women like stone itself. They looked at me as if I had personally murdered their only son. You know what they’re like—they love Richard as dearly as if he rode out only yesterday. Why do they do that? Why do they cling to him still?
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The White Princess (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #5))
“
Diamond awoke to darkness. She felt oddly woozy, and even though she kept blinking, she couldn't see a thing. When she turned her head even slightly, a pounding headache made her close her eyes once more.
"Where am I?" she thought groggily.
Then she remembered Thane and the dog named Bella and the daughter she never got to meet.
"Did I miss the auditions?"
She tried to remember, but her head felt like clotted cream. She waited a few minutes, then took a deep breath and tried to sit up, but her body seemed to be glued. To what? She couldn't move!
Her arms. Oh God, they were tied, stretched above her head. She seemed to be lying on something soft, a bed? And she was freezing. Why was she so cold?
Then, with a lurch of horror, she realized that she was wearing only her underwear. Where were her clothes? Oh my God! Oh my God! Where were her clothes?
Diamond tried to move once more, but her arms were held immobile.
"Ropes?" she wondered, confused, shaky. "Ropes? What's going on?"
She went deadly still. Rain pounded outside a window, thunder rumbled in the distance. A flash of lightning illuminated the room for just a second. She could make out furnitureâa chest of drawers, a chair. Two bulky square-shaped objects against a wall. She noticed a door to her left, but where were her clothes?
She pulled and tugged, but there was no slack in the ropes; she could not pull her arms free. She panicked. That's when she began to scream.
”
”
Sharon M. Draper (Panic)
“
Whether the sun beat hot on their brows or freezing rain turned their bones to ice, Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyneth arrived at practice each morning, ready to … The back of her throat ached; her eyes stung. “We’re in a book.” Gwyn’s fingers slid into hers, squeezing tight. Nesta looked up to find her holding Emerie’s free hand as well. Gwyn smiled again, her eyes bright. “Our stories are worth telling.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
This beautiful thing happens.”
“What thing?”
“When a person finally accepts they are nothing. It’s freedom really.”
“You are not next line. When you accept, you are nothing it freeze you from caring.”
“Tessa”
“And when you are already nothing, you can really become anything.
”
”
Melissa Roehrich
“
It was her smile that took me captive the day we met, and never once let me go. There was an authentic quality to her smile that made people stop and look; a basic human truth that seemed to emanate from deep within her and naturally find its way upward and out. Like the magma flow from Vesuvius, there was simply no stopping Cathy's smile. It could freeze people where they stood and hold them there, sometimes forever.
That's what happened to me anyway.
”
”
Michael Spehn (The Color of Rain: How Two Families Found Faith, Hope, and Love in the Midst of Tragedy)
“
God’s voice is glorious in the thunder. We can’t even imagine the greatness of his power. 6 “He directs the snow to fall on the earth and tells the rain to pour down. 7 Then everyone stops working so they can watch his power. 8 The wild animals take cover and stay inside their dens. 9 The stormy wind comes from its chamber, and the driving winds bring the cold. 10 God’s breath sends the ice, freezing wide expanses of water. 11 He loads the clouds with moisture, and they flash with his lightning. 12 The clouds churn about at his direction. They do whatever he commands throughout the earth. 13 He makes these things happen either to punish people or to show his unfailing love.
”
”
Anonymous (The One Year Bible, NLT)
“
When I was young I was taught well
better to give than to receive
what to do with life I was told
what goals I must achieve
but well intentioned goals of others
were simply not my own
found living my own life no theirs
the full cost of which was my home
I'm full of clear dichotomy
of pleasure and of pain
like loving long days of summer
just as much as those of rain
a thriving centre of attention
I'm comfortable alone
putting others first comes naturally
but my motives are my own
I like to taste sweet delicacies
of loving and of touch
but equally my heart can freeze
when it all becomes too much.
I'm comfortable with the physical
what many would call sin
knowing you cannot spread love to others
if you can't love the skin you're in.
I find myself helping those with troubles
in their times of greatest need
yet my own pain that I suffer from
my own advice I ought heed
I do not expect a following
beside me in my pain
but I'm always pleasantly comforted
by those with me in the rain.
A hopeless female Shakespeare
whose world is getting dark
hoping in small ways at least
I'm able to leave my mark
a successful life is not counted in years
for I shall soon be gone
but by how many lives I have touched and helped
with my humble single one.
I'm grateful of the life I've had
mixed privilege with suffering
maybe I just lived it a little too fast
while others rested during buffering
what memory of me might last
when I step through the final door
I'd rather it be how I faced the world
always with a mighty roar.
And so when the time comes for me
to face my final curtain
I'll face death with the same energy for life
of this you can be certain
no subtle soft exit for this dark winged bird
I'm no peaceful mindless minion,
I'll regale of my sins with the devil himself
in eternity of riotous oblivion.
”
”
Raven Lockwood
“
The President called it the “Epitome of the American dream.” Daddy called it the “unholy alliance of business and government.” But all it really was, was America giving up. Bailing out in order to join the Financial Resource Exchange. A multinational alliance focused on one thing: profit. Fund global medical care to monopolize vaccines. Back unified currency to collect planet-wide interest. And provide the resources needed for a select group of scientists and military personnel to embark on the first trip across the universe in a quest to find more natural resources—more profit. The answer to my parents’ dreams. And my worst nightmare. And I know something about nightmares, seeing as how I’ve been sleeping longer than I’ve been alive. I hope. What if this is just a part of a long dream dreamt in the short time between when Ed locked the cryo door and Hassan pushed the button to freeze me? What if? It’s a strange sort of sleep, this. Never really waking up, but becoming aware of consciousness inside a too-still body. The dreams weave in and out of memories. The only thing keeping the nightmares from engulfing me is the hope that there couldn’t possibly be a hundred more years before I wake up. Not a hundred years. Not three hundred. Not three hundred and one. Please, God, no. Sometimes it feels like a thousand years have passed; sometimes it feels as if I’ve only been sleeping a few moments. I feel most like I’m in that weird state of half-asleep, half-awake I get when I’ve tried to sleep past noon, when I know I should get up, but my mind starts wandering and I’m sure I can never get back to sleep. Even if I do slip back into a dream for a few moments, I’m mostly just awake with my eyes shut. Yeah. Cryo sleep is like that. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong. I shouldn’t be so aware. But then I realize I’m only aware for a moment, and then, as I’m realizing it, I slip into another dream. Mostly, I dream of Earth. I think that’s because I didn’t want to leave it. A field of flowers; smells of dirt and rain. A breeze ... But not really a breeze, a memory of a breeze, a memory made into a dream that tries to drown out my frozen mind. Earth. I hold on to my thoughts of Earth. I don’t like the dreamtime. The dreamtime is too much like dying. They are dreams, but I’m too out of control, I lose myself in them, and I’ve already lost too much to let them take over. I push the dream-memory down. That happened centuries ago, and it’s too late for regrets now. Because all my parents ever wanted was to be a part of the first manned interstellar exploratory mission, and all I ever wanted was to be with them. And I guess it doesn’t matter that I had a life on Earth, and that I loved Earth, and that by now, my friends have all lived and gotten old and died, and I’ve just been lying here in frozen sleep.
”
”
Beth Revis (Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1))
“
Gib bit his bottom lip, taking a moment to plead in silence to the Goddess of Light. If ever she were to listen to the requests of a poor farm boy, this would be an ideal time. Daya, be merciful. We’ll lose half the field if there is a hard freeze tonight. This would surely spell disaster for his family as it had already been a rough year on the crops. With too little warmth and so much excess rain, the fields had resembled a bog for the better part of the season.
”
”
Shiriluna Nott (A Call to Arms (The Chronicles of Arden, #1))
“
There was another whole bunch of hopefuls. They would diminish down at a startling rate. We had seen it happen before.
This time, though, we were there as the “old hands.” And it helped.
We knew what to expect; the mystique had gone, and the prize was up for grabs.
That was empowering.
It was now wintertime, and winter Selection is always considered the tougher course, because of the mountain conditions. I tried not to think about this.
Instead of the blistering heat and midges, our enemies would be the freezing, driving sleet, the high winds, and the short daylight hours.
These made Trucker and me look back on the summer Selection days as quite balmy and pleasant! It is strange how accustomed you become to hardship, and how what once seemed horrific can soon become mundane.
The DS had often told us: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.”
And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me.
(I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.)
The first few weekends progressed, and we both shone.
We were fitter, stronger, and more confident than many of the other recruits, but the winter conditions were very real.
We had to contend with winds that, on one weekend exercise, were so strong on the high ridges that I saw one gust literally blow a whole line of soldiers off their feet--including the DS.
Our first night march saw one recruit go down with hypothermia. Like everyone else, he was wet and cold, but in the wind and whiteout he had lost that will to look after himself, and to take action early.
He had forgotten the golden rule of cold, which the DS had told us over and over: “Don’t let yourself get cold. Act early, while you still have your senses and mobility. Add a layer, make shelter, get moving faster--whatever your solution us, just do it.”
Instead, this recruit had just sat down in the middle of the boggy moon grass and stopped. He could hardly talk and couldn’t stand. We all gathered round him, forming what little shelter we could. We gave him some food and put an extra layer of clothing on him.
We then helped him stagger off the mountain to where he could be picked up by Land Rover and taken to base camp, where the medics could help him.
For him, that would be his last exercise with 21 SAS, and a harsh reminder that the struggles of Selection go beyond the demons in your head. You also have to be able to survive the mountains, and in winter that isn’t always easy.
One of the other big struggles of winter Selection was trying to get warm in the few hours between the marches.
In the summer it didn’t really matter if you were cold and wet--it was just unpleasant rather than life-threatening. But in winter, if you didn’t sort yourself out, you would quickly end up with hypothermia, and then one of two things would happen: you would either fail Selection, or you would die.
Both options were bad.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
It was now wintertime, and winter Selection is always considered the tougher course, because of the mountain conditions. I tried not to think about this.
Instead of the blistering heat and midges, our enemies would be the freezing, driving sleet, the high winds, and the short daylight hours.
These made Trucker and me look back on the summer Selection days as quite balmy and pleasant! It is strange how accustomed you become to hardship, and how what once seemed horrific can soon become mundane.
The DS had often told us: “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training.”
And it rains a lot in the Brecon Beacons. Trust me.
(I recently overheard our middle boy, Marmaduke, tell one of his friends this SAS mantra. The other child was complaining that he couldn’t go outside because it was raining. Marmaduke, age four, put him straight. Priceless.)
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
North of Hardanger the children would run naked in warm rains like these. We don't sew our bearskins on until the sea starts to freeze,' he said.
I nearly hit him.
”
”
Mark Lawrence (Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1))
“
I have many lovers.
Where ever I look, I find them.
There is no place devoid of them.
They are everywhere:
In the enchanting Cottonwood trees,
The rivers, the rocky roads, the hills, the mystic trails,
The snow capped mountains,
The skies, the clouds, the soaring Eagles,
The blackness of night, as black as the Raven,
The absolute brave Cactus,
Listening to me, and the whispers I breathe.
Where ever I, look I find them.
There is no place devoid of them.
My lovers are everywhere.
They are everywhere:
In the rains, the freezing winds,
The sun, the moonlight,
The darkness of despair,
The days of pain and sorrow,
They never leave me, or betray me,
Or ever forsake me,
Even in my unfaithfulness,
They remain mine.
Am I blessed, crazy, or blind?
However much I dare,
Even in those careless moments; they care.
Where ever I look, I find them,
There is no place devoid of them,
My lovers are everywhere.
They are everywhere:
I close my eye’s, I see them,
They appear to me patiently,
like some ancient melody,
in my waking dreams, they are like wise prophets,
twirling in compassionate dances of forgiveness.
Allowing me my mistakes of existence,
They give me, ‘me’,
Reach for my fears, cradle and hold me.
They are everywhere.
I will regenerate,
and shine through their presence.
Through their guidance, from their quiet empowerment,
I will gather myself, pick up my pride,
Understand ‘life’, and remember reality.
Finally, when my ‘being’ remains not with me,
they will once again redefine, re-collect me,
recreate the aura around me,
find another place to replant me.
They are everywhere.
No place is devoid of them.
Countless lovers.
Their love: Omnipresent.
Only if one can ‘see’,
These lovers are everywhere .
”
”
Ansul Noor (Soul Fire- A Mystical Journey through Poetry)
“
Yes, you learn your lessons as they come your way... And when you have learned them all they can stick red-hot pokers in your wife and babies and you will only laugh to see it. Because you will know by then that people don't matter a damn. Men are like corn growing. The sun burns them up and the rain washes them out and the winter freezes them, and the cavalry tramps them down, but somehow they keep growing. And none of it matters a damn so long as the whisky holds out.
”
”
Oakley Hall (Warlock (Legends West, #1))
“
I can say after now spending this last stretch of time in Afghanistan surrounded by sand and dry air is that I cannot wait to freeze my ass off when I finally go back home to Pleasant Point, Maine.
”
”
Elizabeth Miller (Steel Rain: A Military Romance Collection)
“
In Atlanta a minister told his congregation that the pulse had been the first sign of the Apocalypse. In California people gathered around the Hollywood sign with banners welcoming the aliens. In London a man stood outside Westminster Abbey in the freezing rain holding a sign that read “Jesus Is an Alien.” In
”
”
Christopher Mari (Ocean of Storms)
“
There was a sudden flash of lightning which brightly illuminated our faces. I squinted against the harsh light. It was soon followed by the crack of thunder. The strong wind whipped our hair around our faces, and the younger girls squealed as they quickly ran across the grass to get inside the school.
Rose and I sat up, smiles on our faces as we listened to the weather’s dangerous melody. The third flash of lightning finally ripped open the sky’s belly. Freezing rain cascaded out, drenching us in a matter of seconds, the flower garlands drooping and lying limp on our matted hair.
”
”
Erica Sehyun Song (Thorns in the Shadow)
“
A nervous chill ran down his spine as he thought of the petrified German pilot, who was now fragments of meat raining through the freezing atmosphere to the ground, five and a half miles below.
”
”
Joe Matlock (The Other Side Of Courage)
“
I had a terrible premonition. His flight was to Miami. The old news footage flashed through my mind of Air Florida Flight 90 to Miami that went down in a freezing rain. It showed pieces of the wings and smashed fuselage floating in a huge hole in the ice next to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. A helicopter trying to lift a survivor from the black water. Rescuers watching helplessly from the shore. I tried to call him, but the network was down. I’d seen this fearsome power of the past before, how it can rise up without warning and strike the living with unerring timing. Later Lorenzo called from Miami and said it was a rough flight but they made it. I was happy that for once my intuition was wrong.
”
”
J.J. Jorgens (Veterans Day. A Mary Jane Morris Mystery)
“
In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
long enough to stab me in the back.” He laughs bitterly, remembering the attack after the first ball when I tended to his wound. “And now I promise to return the favor.” His voice strains with emotion. “Run, Paedyn. Because when I catch you, I will not miss. I will not falter. I will not make the mistake of feeling for you.” I’m frozen, still standing in the freezing rain. “Go!” he yells, his voice breaking. “Go before I find someone who isn’t a coward, someone who isn’t a fool, and let them bury this dagger in your back right here, right now.
”
”
Lauren Roberts (Powerless (The Powerless Trilogy, #1))
“
Whether the sun beat hot on their brows or freezing rain turned their bones to ice, Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyneth arrived at practice each morning, ready
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
Imagine that every time you want to leave the house you have to get into a bar fight with someone. A sloppy, exhausted, poorly choreographed display of slapping and kicking. You are in a bar fight because they don't want to be strapped, Hannibal Lecter style, into the back of your car. Fair. Even thought you are technically big enough to always win the fight, you still have to buckle a small but shockingly heavy person at a 45 degree angle - possibly in the burning sun or freezing cold or driving rain - into a chair. All the while vaguely recalling the warning that if the buckles are not in the exact right place then the whole point of putting them in the seat is moot and you've ruined everything. If the straps are not tight enough, or if they are too tight, you might as well just throw your kid on the roof of the car untethered to anything and drive off at a million miles per hour because it's all basically the same effect.
”
”
Jessi Klein (I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood)
“
And this tree, now I am looking at is equally stubborn as me. Freezing rain, and howling wind. No, they can’t shake our spirit. Our future stretches before us and we’re travelling together into it in our own velocity.
”
”
Bhuwan Thapaliya
“
And this tree,
now I am looking at
is equally stubborn as me.
Freezing rain, and howling wind.
No, they can’t shake our spirit.
Our future stretches before us
and we’re travelling together into it
at our velocity.
”
”
Bhuwan Thapaliya
“
Gwyn did find them, the priestess panting and flushed as she handed out two rectangular parcels, each roughly the size of a large, thin book. “One for each of you.” Nesta opened the brown paper and beheld a stack of pages filled with writing. At the top of the first page, it merely said, Chapter Twenty-One. She read the first few lines beneath it, then nearly dropped the pages. “This—this is about us.” Gwyn beamed. “I convinced Merrill to add us into the penultimate chapter. She even let me write it—with her own annotations, of course. But it’s about the rebirth of the Valkyries. About what we’re doing.” Nesta had no words. Emerie’s hands were once more shaking as she leafed through the pages. “You had this much to say about us?” Emerie said, choking on a laugh. Gwyn rubbed her hands together. “With more to come.” Nesta read a line at random on the fifth page. Whether the sun beat hot on their brows or freezing rain turned their bones to ice, Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyneth arrived at practice each morning, ready to … The back of her throat ached; her eyes stung. “We’re in a book.” Gwyn’s fingers slid into hers, squeezing tight. Nesta looked up to find her holding Emerie’s free hand as well. Gwyn smiled again, her eyes bright. “Our stories are worth telling.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
A freezing rain was falling. Everything was glazed with crystal ice. “Looks like a warm snap,” I said. She was without a sense of humor that night. It took an effort to overlook my remark.
”
”
Glen Cook (Chronicles of the Black Company (The Chronicles of the Black Company, #1-3))
“
He bears a grudge over what happened years ago," Mary said. "He admitted he's angry over Father Sterling's horses—and the plumbing of all things. He's always been a difficult man, but surely you can keep him from cutting off his nose to spite his face—and your face I might add."
Hassie thought of blazing heat and freezing rain, dust and mud, practicing what to do if surprised by Indians, Bret bleeding on the ground and a man with a gun standing over him. If she had her own gun on her right now, she might shoot a lamp or two.
”
”
Ellen O'Connell (Without Words)
“
In summer, there is no snow on the mountain, except perhaps for the very top or in crags shielded from direct sunlight. In the fall, the mountain may display a coat of brilliant fire colors; in winter, a blanket of snow and ice. In any season, it may at times find itself enshrouded in clouds or fog, or pelted by freezing rain. The tourists who come to visit may be disappointed if they can't see the mountain clearly, but it's all the same to the mountain - seen or unseen, in sun or clouds, broiling or frigid, it just sits, being itself. At times visited by violent storms, buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude, through it all the mountain sits. Spring comes, the birds sing in the trees once again, leaves return to the trees which lost them, flowers bloom in the high meadows and on the slopes, streams overflow with waters of melting snow. Through it all, the mountain continues to sit, unmoved by the weather, by what happens on the surface, by the world of appearances.
”
”
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life)
“
With my girl who laughs with me, and when I finally cry, holds me. Wrapping me in her arms and stroking my hair, she rains kisses down on my head. “I’m falling in love with you, darling,” I murmur, and she freezes. “Don’t, love has a way of changing to hate,” she whispers fearfully, and I lift my head.
”
”
K.A. Knight (Den of Vipers)
“
War
Private Smith of the Royals; the veldt and a slate-black sky,
Hillocks of mud, brick-red with blood, and a prayer—half curse—to die.
A lung and a Mauser bullet; pink froth and a half-choked cry.
Private Smith of the Royals; a torrent of freezing rain;
A hail of frost on a life half lost; despair and a grinding pain.
And the drip-drip-drip of the Heavens to wash out the brand of Cain.
Private Smith of the Royals; the blush of a dawning day;
The fading mist that the sun had kissed—and over the hills away
The blest Red Cross like an angel in the trail of the men who slay.
But Private Smith of the Royals gazed up at the soft blue sky—
The rose-tinged morn like a babe new born and the sweet-songed birds on high—
With a fleck of red on his pallid lip and a film of white on his eye.
”
”
Herbert Cadett
“
There’d been a skylight too, usually kept shuttered . . . but here she suddenly found herself gripped by yet another memory-rush, so keen it was like she was right there again for just a fraction of a second, caught fast in the moment like a webbed-up fly. The image of herself craning high, head so far back her throat hurt, to stare through its slightly warped glass into a passing storm’s laid-open heart: all swirling sleet and pelting freezing rain, an endless spiral with gravity either suspended or overturned inside it, going both up and down at the same exact time. And then—
”
”
Max Booth III (Lost Films)
“
I’m talking about all the order in the natural world,” Malcolm said. “And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?
”
”
Michael Crichton (The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2))
“
His red hair was tied back, and there wasn't a hint of finery on him, just armoured leather, swords, knives... His metal eye roamed over me, his golden skin pale. 'We've been hunting you for over two months,' he breathed, now scanning the woods, the stream, the sky.
Rhys. Cauldron save me. Rhys was too far back, and-
'How did you find me?' My steady, cold voice wasn't one I recognised. But- hunting for me. As if I were indeed prey.
If Tamlin was here... My blood went icier than the freezing rain now sluicing down my face, into my clothes.
'Someone tipped us off you'd been out here, but it was luck that we caught your scent on the wind, and-' Lucien took a step toward me.
I stepped back. Only three feet between me and the stream.
Lucien's eye widened slightly. 'We need to get out of here. Tamlin's been- he hasn't been himself. I'll take you right to-'
'No,' I breathed.
The word rasped through the rain, the stream, the pine forest.
The four sentinels glanced between each other, then to the arrow I kept aimed.
Lucien took me in again.
And I could see what he was gleaming: the Illyrian fighting leathers. The colour and fullness that had returned to my face, my body.
And the silent steel of my eyes.
'Feyre,' he said,' holding out a hand. 'Let's go home.'
I didn't move. 'That stopped being my home the day you let him lock me up inside of it.'
Lucien's mouth tightened. 'It was a mistake. We all made mistakes. He's sorry- more sorry than you realise. So am I.' He stepped toward me, and I backed up another few inches.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
Little Lucien,' Rhys purred. 'Didn't the Lady of the Autumn Court ever tell you that when a woman says no, she means it?'
'Prick,' Lucien snarled, storming past his sentinels, but not daring to touch his weapons. 'You filthy, whoring prick.'
I loosed a growl.
Lucien's eyes sliced to me and he said with quiet horror, 'What have you done, Feyre?'
'Don't come looking for me again,' I said with equal softness.
'He'll never stop looking for you; never stop waiting for you to come home.'
The words hit me in the gut- like they were meant to. It must have shown in my face because Lucien pressed, 'What did he do to you? Did he take your mind and-'
'Enough,' Rhys said, angling his head with that casual grace. 'Feyre and I are busy. Go back to your lands before I send your heads as a reminder to my old friend about what happens when Spring Court flunkies set foot in my territory.'
The freezing rain slid down the neck of my clothes, down my back. Lucien's face was deathly pale. 'You made your point, Feyre- now come home.'
'I'm not a child playing games,' I said through my teeth. That's how they'd seen me: in need of coddling, explaining, defending...
'Careful, Lucien,' Rhysand drawled. 'Or Feyre darling will send you back in pieces, too.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
Are you all right?' he said as he scooped me into his arms to fly us to another location.
I nestled into his warmth, savouring it. 'The fact that it was so easy, that I felt so little, upsets me more than the encounter itself.'
Perhaps that had been my problem all along. Why I hadn't dared take that final step at Starfall. I was guilty that I didn't feel awful, not truly. Not for wanting him.
A few mighty flaps had us soaring up through the trees and sailing low over the forest, rain slicing into my face.
'I knew things were bad,' Rhysand said with quiet rage, barely audible over the freezing bite of the wind and rain, 'but I thought Lucien, at least, would have stepped in.'
'I thought so, too,' I said, my voice smaller than I intended.
He squeezed me gently, and I blinked at him through the rain. For once, his eyes were on me, not the landscape below. 'You look good with wings,' he said, and kissed my brow.
Even the rain stopped feeling so cold.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
Gwyn did find them, the priestess panting and flushed as she handed out two rectangular parcels, each roughly the size of a large, thin book. 'One for each of you.'
Nesta opened the brown paper and beheld a stack of pages filled with writing. At the top of the first page, it merely said, Chapter Twenty-One. She read the first few lines beneath it, then nearly dropped the pages. 'This- this is about us.'
Gwyn beamed. 'I convinced Merrill to add us into the penultimate chapter. She even let me write it- with her own annotations, of course. But it's about the rebirth of the Valkyries. About what we're doing.'
Nesta had no words. Emerie's hands were once more shaking as she leafed through the pages. 'You had this much to say about us?' Emerie said, choking on a laugh.
Gwyn rubbed her hands together. 'With more to come.'
Nesta read a line at random on the fifth page. Whether the sun beat hot on their brows or freezing rain turned their bones to ice, Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyneth arrived at practice each morning, ready to...
The back of her throat ached; her eyes stung. 'We're in a book.'
Gwyn's fingers slid into hers, squeezing tight. Nesta looked up to find her holding Emerie's free hand as well. Gwyn smiled again, her eyes bright. 'Our stories are worth telling.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
The woman walked into the bar for the first time in the winter rain.
She didn’t have an umbrella on her; her little sleeveless dress ended at her ankles, fully drenched. Her wet dress clung to her body, showing the outlines of her curves. In one hand, she was carrying the skirt of her dress. Suddenly, she let it go, and one long, bare arm moved upward as she tried to fix her damp hair which had darkened in intensity due to the rain. It fell past her shoulders, the strands sticking to her face. She attempted to comb through the tangles with her fingertips.
The men watched her movements hungrily, their eager faces drawn to her and at the sight of someone new. Their eyes trailed from her face, to her wet body, then back to the movements of her hands entwined in her hair. Under her other arm, she carried a book and a trench coat. It appeared strange she wasn't wearing the coat when it was pouring outside and freezing in the middle of November.
Men were left mesmerized by her, and she turned heads as she walked by. Something radiated from within her, drawing the men around her in. The women who were with some of these men noticed their gaze on the unfamiliar woman. Now they stared at her with jealousy and anger.
Who is she? they wondered.
”
”
Beena Khan (The Name of Red (Red, #1))
“
Hello, the all-weather Baby-sitters Club! We sit in the sleet, we sit in the freezing rain …
”
”
Ann M. Martin (Happy Holidays, Jessi (The Baby-Sitters Club, #103))
“
I found myself unexpectedly moved, less by the memory of Cook than by the people gathered to honor him. The British were brilliant at this sort of ceremony: sincere, stoic, and understated - nothing like cynical Australians or syrupy Americans. Watching these few dozen faces lashed by freezing rain, their breath clouding as they uttered "God Save the Queen," I caught a glimpse of the grit and pride that had sustained Cook and his men, and that had once enabled this small, damp country to rule so much of the globe.
”
”
Tony Horwitz (Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before)
“
With tinny drumbeats, the rain pounds the roof
My teary eyes compete
They can't keep up
Breathe
Let it go
Breathe
The vice on my chest tightens its razoring grip
I gasp
No relief
If only tears could soothe the pain
Then, I would look upon the tidal waves against these walls without fear
Crush and roll me, I'd plead,
Mold my body anew
But with these tears come no healing,
Just death, slow and determined
This old girl, this old woman, this old soul lives here inside
A tortoise outgrowing this hare's body
This youthful skin encasing a crumbling frame
I smooth the matted web of curls off my sweaty neck
And roll my eyes at the clock
How slowly the time squeaks by here in this room,
In this comfortless bed
I abandon the warmth from under my blanket tower and shiver
The draft rattles my spine
One by one, striking my vertebrae
Like a spoon chiming empty wine glasses,
Hitting the same fragile note till
my neck shakes the chill away
I swipe along the naked floor
with a toe for the slippers beneath the bed
Plush fabric caresses my feet
Stand!
Get up
With both hands, Gravity jerks me back down
Ugh! This cursed bed!
No more, I want no more of it
I try again
My legs quiver in search of my former strength
Come on, old girl, Come on, old woman, Come on, old soul,
Don't quit now
The floor shakes beneath me,
Hoping I trip and fall
To the living room window, I trudge
My joints grind like gravel under tires
More pain no amount of tears can soothe away
Pinching the embroidered curtain between my knuckles,
I find solace in the gloom
The wind humming against the window,
Makes the house creak and groan
Years ago, the cold numbed my pain
But can it numb me again,
This wretched body and fractured soul?
Outside I venture with chants fluttering my lips,
Desperate solemn pleas
For comfort, For mercy
For ease, For health
I open the plush throw spiraled around my shoulders
And tiptoe around the porch's rain-soaked boards
The chilly air moves through me like Death on a mission,
My body, an empty gorge with no barriers to stop him,
No flesh or bone
My highest and lowest extremities grow numb
But my feeble knees and crippling bones turn half-stone, half-bone
Half-alive, half-dead
No better, just worse
The merciless wind freezes my tears
My chin tumbles in despair
I cover myself and sniffle
Earth’s scent funnels up my nose:
Decay with traces of life in its perfume
The treetops and their slender branches sway,
Defying the bitter gusts
As I turn to seek shelter, the last browned leaf breaks away
It drifts, it floats
At the weary tree’s feet, it makes its bed alongside the others
Like a pile of corpses, they lie
Furled and crinkled with age
No one mourns their death
Or hurries to honor the fallen with thoughtful burials
No rage-filled cries echo their protests at the paws trampling their fragile bodies,
Or at the desecration by the animals seeking morning relief
And new boundaries to mark
Soon, the stark canopy stretching over the pitiful sight
Will replace them with vibrant buds and leaves
Until the wasting season again returns
For now, more misery will barricade my bones as winter creeps in
Unless Death meets me first to end it
”
”
Jalynn Gray-Wells (Broken Hearts of Queens (Lost in Love Book 1))
“
Even though I feel them for him, I had to hold back, to know for sure. I just had to hold back. That’s we he drifted off… Why did he fall asleep on me? Was it because I’m boring or is he just exposed? My head thumping still, I know was not thinking clearly, so I staggered back down the long hallway back into the dwindling party. I see one of the double-hung windows. Without anyone observing I reach my hand forward and place it on the big old sill, there is an electric candle with a night light bulb sitting in the middle. I crack the window to let out the smoke and smells out, and to get some much-needed air.
A fine stream of rain-sh snow is gusting in on my face, it’s cold but feels so-so good, even though it’s winter. Enjoying the freezing air and the sensation of a hundred of little sparkly flacks.
I squeezed my eyes closed tightly and promised myself that I’ll never forget the moment I just had with him. Funny I wanted to forget about all the sound, the tacky lights, and smalls of my friends and their mindless hilarity that they're tittering about. For some reason… I wanted to forget about all the heated hookups and the many bodies that were around me. What surpasses me the most about this, is that this is what I lived for and sacrificed so much to gain… to have the gathering and wanting of others that are popular, it's everything I ever wanted. Yet it seemed at that moment, I was better off before not having it. Before I became this girl… the girl that I’m not… not truly on the inside.
When I open my eyes, I get the shock of my life. My little sis is standing in the doorway, staring at me. With that look holding me. She must have snuck out and followed me to this party with some of her older girlfriends, she has been messing with the wrong crew lately. I knew what happened to her tonight just by looking at her face, I knew. And if I find that boy, I’ll rip his sagging balls off! Then again, I was not much older than her when I went to my first party. I was horrified, she was doing what I did, back when I felt like I was dying inside. I was dead long before I wound up dead. I just wonder if she feels the same…? I wonder if I am the cause. How would let her in… and how did she get so popular already?
”
”
Marcel Ray Duriez (Young Taboo (Nevaeh))