Cold Enough for Snow Quotes

“we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Maybe it's good, I said, to stop sometimes and reflect upon the things that have happened, maybe thinking about sadness can actually end up making you happy.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“As we walked, she asked me about my work. I didn't answer at first, and then I said that in many old paintings, one could discover what was called a pentimento, an earlier layer of something that the artist had chosen to paint over. Sometimes, these were as small as an object, or a color that had been changed, but other times, they could be as significant as a whole figure, an animal, or a piece of furniture. I said that in this way too, writing was just like a painting. It was the only way that one could go back and change the past, to make things not as they were, but as we wished they had been, or rather as we saw it. I said, for this reason, it was better for her not to trust anything she read.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I knew that if I had a daughter, she would live partly because of the way I had lived, and her memories would be my memories, and she would have no choice in that matter.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I asked my mother what she believed about the soul and she thought for a moment. Then, looking not at me but at the hard, white light before us, she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting. When she was growing up, she said that she had never thought of herself in isolation, but rather as inextricably linked to others. Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“She made no attempt to hide her grief, which must have been her father’s grief also, and this surprised me, that she would not try and mask it somehow, that she was not ashamed of the drama, as my family would have been, but inhabit it with rage and sadness, as if it were the cloak of some great animal that she had just slain.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I had the vague thought I had been taught somehow that the best thing was still to be desired, even if you did not desire, even if you did not much like the person who desired you. Where I had learned this, I did not yet know.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I said that I too sometimes did not understand what I saw in galleries, or read in books. Though I understood the pressure of feeling like you had to have a view or opinion, especially one that you could articulate clearly, which usually only came with a certain education. This, I said, allowed you to speak of history and context, and was in many ways like a foreign language. For a long time, I had believed in this language, and I had done my best to become fluent in it. But I said that sometimes, increasingly often in fact, I was beginning to feel like this kind of response too was false, a performance, and not the one I had been looking for. Sometimes, I looked at a painting, and felt completely nothing. Or if I had a feeling, it was only intuitive, a reaction, nothing that could be expressed in words. It was all right, I said, to simply say if that was so. The main thing was to be open, to listen, to know when and when not to speak.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“it was impossible, ultimately, to compare one life to another, and we always ended up essentially in the same place where we had begun.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“It was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“She had kept, I knew, all the tickets, brochures and guides we had been given to take home, as if she would take them out later to read as one reads a novel.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached the state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“almost like how painters had once used the camera obscura: by looking indirectly at the thing they wanted to focus on, they were sometimes able to see it even more clearly than with their own eyes.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Laurie and I read till late, and when I finally fell asleep, I sensed that Laurie was no longer reading, but looking at me as one is able to look upon a person one knows well, fully, and without reserve." (75)”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Another time, the power cut out and we dug up a headlamp and a few candles from one of the still-unpacked moving boxes. While the storm went on outside, we went round and placed the candles at various guiding points throughout the house. When I lit them in the kitchen, it smelled briefly of birthday cakes. I remember cooking a simple dinner, pulling the skins off the tomatoes in the near darkness, going by feel rather than by sight. Laurie had put the record player on, and danced slowly and achingly in front of the cat, who continued to glower from her cushion on the floor. We could barely see the food on the table, noticing only the shapes and textures of the vegetables in their bowls. I had taken the washing in and sheets were hung and draped over the rack, a ladder, a glass door. Outside, we could hear that the wind was strong, but inside it was still. I remembered thinking, as we ate, how such happiness could come from such simple things." (71)”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Then she reached for her bag and took out a small book. She explained she had found it at a store near her home, and that it described the nature of your character based on the date of your birth. (...) I thought some of it was true and some of it was not, but the real truth was how such things allowed someone to talk about you, or what you had done or why you did it, in a way that unraveled your character into distinct traits. It made you seem readable to them, or to yourself, which could feel like a revelation.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Maybe it's good to stop sometimes and reflect upon the things that have happened, maybe thinking about sadness can actually end up making you happy.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“They had seemed to me then, as now, like paintings about time. It felt like the artist was looking at the field with two gazes. The first was the gaze of youth, awakening to a dawn of pink light on the grass, and looking with possibility on everything, the work he had done just the day before, the work he had still to do in the future. The second was the gaze of an older man, perhaps older than Monet had been when he painted them, who was looking at the same view, and remembering these earlier feelings and trying to recapture them, only he was unable to do so without infusing them with his own sense of inevitability.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I thought about how vaguely familiar this scene was to me, especially with the smells of the restaurant around me, but strangely so, because it was not my childhood, but my mother’s childhood that I was thinking of, and from another country at that. And yet there was something about the subtropical feel, the smell of the steam and the tea and the rain. It reminded me of her photographs, or the television dramas we had watched together when I was still young. Or it was like the sweets she used to buy for me, which no doubt were the sweets her mother used to buy for her. It was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I thought that some of it was true and some of it was not, but the real truth was how such things allowed someone to talk about you, or what you had done or why you did it, in a way that unraveled your character into distinct traits. It made you seem readable to them, or to yourself, which could feel like a revelation. But who’s to say how anyone would act on a given day, not to mention the secret places of the soul, where all manner of things could exist? I wanted to talk more about this, if only to chase the thought further, to pin it down for myself, but I knew too that she needed, and wanted, to believe in such things:”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“it was like remembering the details of a dream she once had, that perhaps, at some point in her life, there had been things worth screaming and crying over, some deeper truth, or even horror, that everyone around you perpetually denied, such that it only made you angrier and angrier. Yet now, my sister could not harness that feeling, only the memory of it, or not even that, but something even more remote.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I thought of my mother, and how some day, in the future, I would go with my sister to her apartment, the one I had never seen, with the single task of sorting through a lifetime of possessions, packing everything away. I thought of all the things I would find there—private things like jewelry, photo albums and letters, but also signs of a careful and well-organized life: bills and receipts, phone numbers, an address book, the manual for the washing machine and dryer. In the bathroom, there would be half-used glass vials and jars of creams, signs of her daily rituals that she did not like anyone else to see. My sister, I knew, ever methodical, would suggest we sort things into piles: things to keep, things to donate, things to put in the trash. I would agree but, in the end, I knew I would keep nothing, whether out of too much, or too little sentiment, I did not know.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“And yet there was something about the subtropical feel, the smell of the steam and the tea and the rain. It reminded me of her photographs, or the television dramas we had watched together when I was still young. Or it was like the sweets she used to buy for me, which no doubt were the sweets her mother used to buy for her. It was strange at once to be so familiar and yet so separated. I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“When we were younger, my mother had regularly read to us from a book of Japanese fables, having saved nothing from her own childhood. One story had been about a mountain, whose peak was surrounded by a ring of clouds, like a necklace, and who had been so beautiful that the greatest of all mountains had fallen in love with her. But the mountain with the clouds had not returned the other’s affections, and instead had pined after a smaller, flatter mountain below. The great mountain had been so shocked and enraged by this, it had erupted into a volcano, covering the skies with smoke and darkness and pain for many days. I remember for some reason feeling incredibly moved by this story, the love of the beautiful cloud mountain for the kinder, smaller one, the torment of the volcano, as if, at that age, their passions had seemed more real to me than any human ones.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“I asked my mother what she believed about the soul and she thought for a moment. Then, looking not at me but at the hard, white light before us, she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“People born on your birthday, she said, are idealistic in their youth. In order to be truly free, they need to realise the impossibility of their dreams, and thus be humbled, and only then will they be happy. They like peace, order and beautiful things, but they can live entirely in their own heads.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“… something continued to elude me, both in the house and afterward, a feeling I could not quite shake… it felt like I was living my life from the outside in. I picked up objects that had long been mine – clothes, makeup, books – and at times it was as if they did not belong to me but were a stranger’s.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“But who’s to say how anyone would act on a given day, not to mention the secret places of the soul, where all manner of things could exist?”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow