Quotes About New England

“When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.”
― Alice Hoffman, Here on Earth

“What New England is, is a state of mind, a place where dry humor and perpetual disappointment blend to produce an ironic pessimism that folks from away find most perplexing”
― Willem Lange

“A small and sinister snow seems to be coming down relentlessly at present. The radio says it is eventually going to be sleet and rain, but I don't think so; I think it is just going to go on and on, coming down, until the whole world...etc. It has that look.”
― Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer

“Poor dull Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the Redcoats.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“Only she who attempts the absurd can ever achieve the impossible.”
― Nancy Means Wright

“If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”
― Mark Twain

“New England, with its Humid Continental climate, its cool, short summers and stony, glaciated crystalline land....”
― Loyal Durand, Jr.

“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines

“There was a young lady from Gloucester
Who complained that her parents both bossed her,
So she ran off to Maine.
Did her parents complain?
Not at all -- they were glad to have lost her.”
― John Ciardi, The Hopeful Trout and Other Limericks

“Withstanding the cold develops vigor for the relaxing days of spring and summer. Besides, in this matter as in many others, it is evident that nature abhors a quitter.”
― Arthur C. Crandall, New England Joke Lore: The Tonic of Yankee Humor

“...the air has that bracing autumnal bite so that all you want to do is bob for apples or hang a witch or something.”
― Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes

“The Greeks had just one word for 'economize.' Our New England grandmothers had twelve: 'Eat it up; use it up; make it do, or do without.”
― Helen Lyon Adamson

“Springtime in Massachusetts is depressing for those who embrace a progressive view of history and experience. It does not gradually develop as spring is supposed to. Instead, the crocuses bloom and the grass grows, but the foliage is independent from the weather, which gets colder and colder and sadder and sadder until June when one day it becomes brutishly hot without warning...It was fitting, then, that the first people who chose to settle there were mentally suspect.”
― Rebecca Harrington, Penelope