It was that prolonged, flat, cheerless week that follows Christmas. My own existence seemed infinitely stagnant, relieved only by work on another book. Those interminable latter days of the dying year create an interval, as it were, of moral suspension: one form of life already passed away before another has had time to assert some new, endemic characteristic. Imminent change of direction is for some reason often foreshadowed by such colourless patches of time.
—Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

The two long loneliest holiday weekends of the year.
—E. B. White, letter, January 1984

The year’s end is a terrible time, and the year’s beginning is a worse.
—Henry James, letter, January 1, 1893

Indeed, I was this night but a bad member of society. I was bashful and silent.
—James Boswell, journal, December 31, 1762

Depressing year but not as depressing as the thought of a new one.
—Dawn Powell, diary, December 31, 1940

Ah, beautiful is decay!
—Henry David Thoreau, December 31, 1851

One advantage of company, not the only one but considerable . . . it’s pleasanter to agree with other people and exchange harmless little lies than to quarrel with oneself and exchange large hurtful truths.
—D. J. Enright, Interplay

Had it been summer they would have gone out together and indolently sipped two long Tom Collinses, as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill’s, or a thimbleful of Maury’s Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and catlike, in his favorite chair.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

It is enjoyable but not the acme of peace.
—Noel Coward, journal, on Sinatra’s 1955 New Year’s Eve party in Palm Springs

Casper placed a napkin on top of a silver shaker and rattled it good. Then he carefully began to pour. First, he filled my glass to the brim. The liquor was so cold and pure it gave the impression of being more translucent than water. Next he filled Eve’s glass. When he began filling Tinker’s, the flow of alcohol from the shaker slowed noticeably. And then trickled. For a moment it seemed as if there wasn’t going to be enough. But the gin kept trickling and the surface kept rising until with the very last drop Tinker’s martini reached the brim. It was the sort of precision that gave one confidence.
—Amor Towles, The Rules of Civility

Parties and drink are a bad thing when one has a little misery lurking somewhere.—Barbara Pym, diary, October 26, 1944

“Well if you want to take a walk, maybe we can get a car.”

“Swell,” she said. “One more drink.”

“Really?”

“Oh Prosper,” she said rising. “Don’t be a better-notter.”
—John Crowley, Four Freedoms

puddingtime
1. The time of dinner; the time at which pudding, anciently the first dish, is set upon the table.
2. Nick of time, critical minute.

Mars that still protects the stout,
In puddingtime came to his aid.
HUDIBRAS.
—Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language

This first day of the new year has a slice of wind like a circular saw.
—Virginia Woolf, diary, January 1, 1941

After dinner to my office again, where very late alone upon my accounts, but have not brought them to order yet, and very intricate I find it, notwithstanding my care all the year to keep things in as good method as any man can do.
—Samuel Pepys, diary, January 1, 1665

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
—Charles Lamb, “New Year’s Eve”

With a deepening sense of guilt, failure, loneliness and insecurity, I greet the New Year.
—Cyril Connolly, journal, January 1, 1929

Are you still here?
—Donald Westlake, label on a file folder in his office