Quote of the Day (V.S. Pritchett, on Happiness in a Late October Day)

“In the late part of that October there was dry weather and not a cloud in the sky for a fortnight. The kind of sky which had sat heavily upon the hills, the fields and the woods in the summer before Dunkley and the girl came to the house, had gone away like some big, yawning countrywoman; and what was left was space, fairer and taller in its blueness. Not only in the early frosted morning when Dunkley looked out after lighting the fire, but at noon and all through the day, they felt that they were stepping out of the house into the clear, prickling water of a spring. If they came out on the sunny side of the house and looked up into the sun’s face, the light striped and drenched them from head to foot, making their toes spread in their shoes; they thought they were standing under a silent and everlasting fountain. This silence of the month was a mark on everything. Even a labourer digging in the garden and bending up from his spade looked down to where the weald of small fields and small lodges met the hangers like a coast of a long vanished sea and said, ‘Isn’t that quiet?’”—English man of letters V.S. Pritchett (1900-1997), “A New World,” Granta, Issue 87 (Fall 2004)