“We shove the dirt over the book, tamping down the disturbed soil. The grass will grow back soon enough. It will be for us the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”

“And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves." "So grass is death too-it grows out of our buried bodies. The grass was so many different things at once, it was bewildering. So grass is a metaphor for life, and for death, and for equality, and for connectedness, and for God, and for hope.”

“And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves, Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps, And here you are the mothers' laps."- Song of Myself: 6”

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory....Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”

“When cultivating your garden, keep the soil healthy with encroachers. The most redolent flowers grow over graves.”

“Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!”