Sula

“The sunlight poured through and sent shadows and tracery upon the white walls, so that the dreamer could lie and watch a pageant of intricate weaving light, a maze of patterned shades, a quivering picture of ever-changing design. The girl put a bowl of water on the deep sill, to catch the sunbeams and flash them in facets over the white ceiling. Dreaming, she sat watching it, fascinated by the curves and cusps of cutting light beams, the blades of fine gold. In autumn when the leaves were thinning, the pale drifts floated into the room and lay on the water.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done

“There was radiant sunshine, the kind that comes sometimes in November, more ethereal than the light of summer. The sky was china-blue, ice-cold, and the sunshine delicate as yellow pollen. This light lay on the walls, already powdered with gold lichens, it gilded the trees, and gave the old farmhouse the appearance of unreality. It was dream-like, it was an old coloured print in a picture book, flat and unshadowed, and brimmed with a living beauty, sending out a light of its own.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done

“One must know how to destroy so that one may build, to weed so that useful plants may grow.”
― Elizabeth Coatsworth, Here I Stay

“Even the foreseen loss of your parents at a normal age brings shocks you have not bargained for. One is that you must finally face the fact that you are grown up. While they are alive, you can be their child, even in middle age. They stand between you and death. With both of them gone, you are next in line.
But that is nothing compared to the unexpected gap, the vast space, not a desert or emptiness, because a desert has substance, and emptiness implies containment. An infinite nothing.”
― Monica Dickens, An Open Book