Someone on another website solved the second quotation for me. It’s from Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things:
Recounting the strange is like telling one’s dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one’s entire day.
Many thanks to everyone who searched.
The season come again for winter’s tales, I tell you one which my nurse told to me As watched I warily the swirling snows. “I’ll raise one up,” she swore, “of ghosts by night…”