“Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.”
“I think of the flower in the bud: huddled, compressed, dark. Yet somehow it feels the night, knows moon from sun. It waits...waits.”
“Dryness promotes the formation of flower buds...flowering is, after all, not an aesthetic contribution, but a survival mechanism.”
“Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.”
“Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?”
“A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing — a flower in the process of expressing its potential.”