“You're strictly a tulip girl—a red tulip girl.”

“But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.”

“And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closesIts bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.--from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961”

“[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon]I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym”

“He was shorter than an average eight-year-old boy but exceptionally tall for a tulip.”

“The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there.”