“There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.” ― Jim Butcher, Death Masks

 “The sky, drunk with spring and giddy with its fumes, thickened with clouds. Low clouds, drooping at the edges like felt sailed over the woods and rain leapt from them, warm, smelling of soil and sweat, and washing the last of the black armor-plating of ice from the earth.”

― Boris Pasternak

“It was still raw and cold, but every now and then there would be a day, or an hour, or a moment, when the sun came out, and there was something different in the air: a sort of glimpsed fragrance, like when the kitchen door is opened for a second while the birthday cake is being baked. It was a smell of promise. The little brook bellowed hoarsely; there was a swelling at the joints of the twigs, and the first skunk cabbages appeared, brown cowls beside the brook. And at night, tinkling, jingling, gurgling, with high silvery notes, came the voices of the peepers. The dark was spangled with their voices.”

― Elizabeth Enright, The Four-Story Mistake