“Being alive is gardening and cooking and birds and green and blue, at the very least.”

“When you're cooking with food as alive as this -- these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh -- you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener ... this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight.”

“I will make you brooches and toys for your delightOf bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.I will make a palace fit for you and meOf green days in forests and blue days at sea.”

“Gardens by their very nature are fragile beings that live in the two dimensions of time and care.”

“Look at this world! So vast! So wide! Huge masses of land spread across it; multitudes of green and brown islands dotted the blue expanse of the oceans. He felt like a bird contemplating the sky.”

“A plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive, at least a little bit…”