“First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.”s
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Very possibly, Ray Bradbury has written more about the month of October than any other writer. Even when he is not specifically writing about October, visions of that month seem to be lurking somewhere within his consciousness.

“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

“Nobody moved.

Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I’ll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can’t find her.”

Then… some idiot turned on the lights.

― Ray Bradbury, “The October Game“

October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale.
Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: “It is simply a matter,” he explained to April, “of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.”
― Neil Gaiman, Season of Mists

“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

“He loved October. Had always loved it. There was something sad and beautiful about it – the ending and beginning of things.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, If You Come Softly

“What the light looks like in the pear trees, in October, is a hundred teardrops of gold, the whole orchard weeping.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“Anne reveled in the world of color about her.

“Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill–several thrills?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

 

“October

O love, turn from the changing sea and gaze,
Down these grey slopes, upon the year grown old,
A-dying ‘mid the autumn-scented haze
That hangeth o’er the hollow in the wold,
Where the wind-bitten ancient elms infold
Grey church, long barn, orchard, and red-roofed stead,
Wrought in dead days for men a long while dead.

Come down, O love; may not our hands still meet,
Since still we live today, forgetting June,
Forgetting May, deeming October sweet? –
– Oh, hearken! hearken! through the afternoon
The grey tower sings a strange old tinkling tune!
Sweet, sweet, and sad, the toiling year’s last breath,
To satiate of life, to strive with death.

And we too -will it not be soft and kind,
That rest from life, from patience, and from pain,
That rest from bliss we know not when we find,
That rest from love which ne’er the end can gain?
– Hark! how the tune swells, that erewhile did wane!
Look up, love! -Ah! cling close, and never move!
How can I have enough of life and love?”
― William Morris