“Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read DarwinStruggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin’s Natural Selectionon Spencer and Huxleywith the Burbank potato.Young man go west;Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; Luther Burbankcould cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbankcarried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper’s fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin Darwin.Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don’t have volcanosany more.”

“The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.”

“When they were all up playing in the nursery George caught something again and had monia on account of getting cold on his chest and Yourfather was very solemn and said not to grieve if God called little brother away. But God brought little George back to them only he was delicate after that and had to wear glasses, and when Dearmother let Eveline help bathe him because Miss Mathilda was having the measles too Eveline noticed he had something funny there where she didn't have anything. She asked Dearmother if it was a mump, but Dearmother scolded her and said she was a vulgar little girl to have looked. "Hush, child, don't ask questions. Evaline got red all over and cried and Adelaide and Margaret wouldn't speak to her for days on account of her being a vulgar little girl.”

“He knew he would have to believe in order to go where she had been; knew that, if he believed, he could go there even if it didn't exist, if it was make-believe. He moved the hand she had drawn around her down her long flesh, and with a little sound she pressed herself against him. He searched himself for that old will, long in disuse. If she went there, ever, he didn't want to be left behind; wanted to never be farther from than this.”

“He put his shoes over the red stone footprints and when he came to the last one on the path, fell to the ground and imagined being shot. The grass was cool and sharp on his cheek. Dying, he resolved, was like that—like lying down on a piece of very green grass, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and never getting up again.”

“Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly.”

“I can win anytime. Kevin's going to go back to Burbank and tell everybody in his cubicle how he won at the Golden Nugget. Sometimes the pot isn't the money.”