Quote of the Day, 10/21/06: October

October is my favorite month. It's cool and windy, the skies are at their clearest, there's Halloween and applesauce, and the smell of fires burning, and of course, the trees are in their second bloom.

(Note, I'm changing my subject lines for quote of the day, so that the quote topic is in there too.)

Here are today's quotes, all about October.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.

Henry David Thoreau
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.” It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit....

Margaret Walker
From the poem "October Journey" which you can read and listen to here.

I want to tell you what hills are like in October
when colors gush down mountainsides
and little streams are freighted with a caravan of leaves,
I want to tell you how they blush and turn in fiery shame

. and joy,

how their love burns with flames consuming and terrible
until we wake one morning and woods are like a smoldering

. plain--

a glowing caldron full of jewelled fire;
the emerald earth a dragon's eye
the poplars drenched with yellow light
and dogwoods blazing bloody red.