“I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must alwayshave been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it couldnever have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely becauseit might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it.”

“He looked like a once-green leaf that had begun to dry and to reveal the structure of its veins.”

“Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. - From "Leaf by Niggle”

“She turned back to inspect a bank of greens: olive, jade, leaf, kiwi, lime, a silver-green like the back of birch leaves, a bright pistachio.”

“A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.”

“I get the whole lost-your-parents thing. Been there. But that don’t have to turn you stupid. That’s a choice, like wearing green stretch pants.”