I wish you were here. The days and nights are beautiful as only autumn can be […] My delight is purely aesthetic, and country bumpkin I am good, industrious, and loving; how long will it be, though, before I break out?
— Vita Sackville West, letter to Virginia, 11 Oct 1927
I remember being surprised at how yellow and how red autumn really is.
— Joe Brainard, I Remember
In the corner of Mommy’s heart, a small black mole lifts its head / It becomes a song. A fabulous solo roams desperately looking for death / A song graceful like the deep autumn night / The endless greetings of the dead.
— Kim Hyesoon, Autobiography of Death
Say autumn. / Say autumn despite the green / in your eyes. Beauty despite / daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn / mounting in your throat.
— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
We’re the types who keep from joining everyone outside, or rather, we enjoy-with-skirmish an autumn sunset’s afterglow, anticipating instead the quick tide of darkness that comes next.
— Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood
The mottled lights from across the other bank beamed on the water, reminding me of Van Gogh's Starlight Over the Rhone. Very autumnal, very beginning of school year, very Indian summer, and as always at Indian summer twilight, that lingering mix of unfinished summer business and unfinished homework and always the illusion of summer months ahead, which wears itself out no sooner than the sun has set.
— André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name