“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Autumn serenades the breeze into dancing a cha cha cha; the mountains echo in the background. October sky never looked more charming nor the sublime leaves of the trees so graceful.” — Avijeet Das

“After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her.” — Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond (I read this book obsessively when I was a preteen. I still own a copy of it!)

“You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets, and there would be weeks of gray before it finally decided to snow.” — Katherine Arden, Small Spaces

“Yet, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other things—crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October…” — A.A. Milne, “A Word for Autumn”

“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.” — Leif Enger, Peace Like a River