“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”

― Edith Lovejoy Pierce

 

***

 

“Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”

― Brad Paisley

 

***

 

The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.”

― Melody Beattie

 

***

 



“Often misunderstood, Dionysus is far more than a wine deity. He is the Breaker of Chains, who rescues not only the flesh but the heart and spirit from too much of worldly regulations and duties. He is a god of joy and freedom. Any uncultivated, tangled, and primal woodland is very much his domain.” 

― Tanith Lee, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest

 

 

 



"Beware the door with too many keys"

Portuguese Proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



“If I could, I would stop the passage of time. But hour follows on hour, minute on minute, each second robbing me of a morsel of myself for the nothing of tomorrow. I shall never experience this moment again.”

― Guy de Maupassant

 

 



“Be an opener of doors”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 



"You shall not pass!"

 

- Gandalf, Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.Tolkien.

 

 

 



“When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things - not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.”
― Bob Hope

 

***

 

“I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.”
― Harlan Miller

 

***

 

“Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence.”
― Joan Mills

 

***

 

“Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion."
~ (1889-1970), American religious leader. ”
― Ralph Sockman

 

***

 



“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful."

― Norman Vincent Peale

 

 

 

 



“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”

― Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

 



“They are not long, the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes, within a dream.”

― Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson

 

 



 

“It was an amazing garden like nothing Will had ever seen. Everything was covered in snow and glittering ice, the winding paths, the clusters of trees and what looked like mazes. And here and there blue fountains splashed and a river meandered between them, though the water didn’t look like water at all but like a stream of sapphires. And strangest of all was how see-through everything looked, trees showing through trees, the river showing through heaps of snow. It was all like a daydream, half imagination, half reality. But Will knew that it was real.”

― Dew Pellucid

 

 



 

“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

 



“That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.”

― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden.

 

 



“Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.”

― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

 

 



 

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

 

 

 



"'Tis not the season of
the leaf whose
fragile body’s broken veins
disintegrate in
gusts of winds while
winter blows a frosty coat that
caps the barren land."

- Lucille Younger 

 

 



“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”

― Charles M. Schulz

 

 



“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost..."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

 



“Little girls think it's necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it's a shame...I'm all about mystery.”

― Stevie Nicks

 



"I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December."

- Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

 



“Winter is much like unrequited love; cold and merciless.”

― Kellie Elmore

 

 



“Stairs," Valkyrie said, disappointed.

"Not just ordinary stairs," Skulduggery told her as he led the way down. "Magic stairs."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes."

She followed him into the darkness. "How are they magic?"

"They just are."

"In what way?"

"In a magicky way."

She glared at the back of his head. "They aren't magic at all, are they?"

"Not really.”

― Derek Landy, Mortal Coil

 

 

 

(doll's house stairs)



“Snow falling soundlessly in the middle of the night will always fill my heart with sweet clarity”

― Novala Takemoto, Missin' (Novel)

 

 



“It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down....”

― Kate Morton, The House At Riverton

 

 

 

 

Photo not taken by me (obviously!), but I own it (it came with a Victorian

photo album that I bought).



“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins”

― Gustave Flaubert

 



“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land.

 

 

 



“The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror”

 
― Gustave Flaubert

 

 

 

Photo by me.

From now on, rather than keep writing 'photo by me' every single time, I will

only leave an ending note/credit if the photo is NOT by me. :)



"I have a dress-up chest at home. I love to create this fantasy kind of thing."

- Kate Moss

 

 

 

Photo by me.

 



“...December's wintery breath is already clouding the pond, frosting the pane, obscuring summer's memory...”

― John Geddes

 

(not quite December but this quote was so fitting for this very frosty morning!)

 

 

Photo by me.

 

 

 

“She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl's wings and talons and became other than conscious.” 

― John Crowley, Little, Big

 

 

Photo by me. It's not a manip, it really was exactly like that!

 

Love is like wildflowers.  It's often found in the most unlikely places.

 

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

The following is an animation so please give it time to load, thanks.

 

Photo and animation by me.

 

Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.

- Barbara Sher

 

 

 

Photo taken and edited by me.



“Curiosity is more important than knowledge.”

 
― Albert Einstein

 

 

Photo by me.

 

"The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will the dormouse do then,
Poor thing?
Roll'd up like a ball,
In his nest snug and small,
He'll sleep till warm weather comes in,
Poor thing.

- Traditional ballad, The North Wind Doth Blow  

 

 

Photo by me (not quite a dormouse but a teeny tiny mouse I rescued from

the neighbour's cat!).

 

[Describing the ballet of the Red Shoes]
Boris Lermontov: "The Ballet of The Red Shoes" is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a young girl who is devoured with an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of Red Shoes. She gets the shoes and goes to the dance. For a time, all goes well and she is very happy. At the end of the evening she is tired and wants to go home, but the Red Shoes are not tired. In fact, the Red Shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on.
Julian Craster: What happens in the end?
Boris Lermontov: Oh, in the end, she dies.

 

 

 

Photo by me.

 

 

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.” 

― Robert A. Heinlein

 

 

Photo by me - Hugo (RIP) and Buffy, my

inlaw's cats.

"We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here."

- Susan Taylor

 

Photo by me.

 

"Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to Spring."
- Anonymous

 

 

Photo by me.

 

“The key of persistence opens all doors closed by resistence ”

 
― John Di Lemme

 

 

Photo by me (using mirrors to give the effect of infinity!)

 

“Many never realize they always had the key in their pocket, so they die at the locked door, never reaching deep inside to pull it out.”

― Anthony Liccione

 

 

Photo by me.

 

Frodo:
I wish the ring had never come to me.
I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf:
So do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do
with the time that is given to us.

 

 

 

Photo by me.

"Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable, the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street or road by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese. Both are warnings of chill days ahead, fireside and topcoat weather."

- Hal Borland

 

 

Photo by me.

 

"Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires."  

- Charles Caleb Colton

 

 

Photo by me.

"We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams."

- Jeremy Irons

 

 

Photo and editing by me.

 

"Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains - a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail."

- Henri Frederic Amiel

 

 

Photo by me.

"How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow."

- Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

 

 

Photo by me.

 

Everything begins and ends, at exactly the right time and place...

 - Picnic At Hanging Rock

 

Photo from the movie 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'.

 

"Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul."

 

 ~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

 

 

 

Photo of me, by me.