“Women are like parasitical plants, casting their wild tendrils from one tree to another, till, swollen into tough cordage, they strangle those they embrace, and luxuriate in their decay.”

“Nila lay there with the moonlight cascading through her open window casting ominous shadows about the room. The tendrils of those shadows reached out from the dark and tugged at her aching heart.”

“I planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all.”

“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.”

“Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees, ... one's happiness, one's reality?”

“Life is literally a process of one creature eating another, whether it’s bacteria breaking down plants or animals, plants strangling each other, animals going for the throat, or viruses attacking animals. “All of nature is a conjugation of the verb ‘to eat,’” in the words of William Ralph Inge.”