“How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.”

“There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall.”

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

“A guitarist or a drummer can get a cold and still play; I get a cold and sound like a wet mitten trying to sing you a love song. Charming.”

“During the '70s, when the Cold War was still on, we invited Voznesensky and Yevtushenko to come here. We had very large readings for them. It was a way of kind of culturally thawing the Cold War.”

“Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment.”

“Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?”

“A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year; just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in.”

“At my door the leaves are falling;
A cold wild wind has come.
Sweethearts walk by together;
And I still miss someone.”

“Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!”