“I won't regret, because you can grow flowers where dirt used to be.”

“Most girls got flowers. I got a dirt pit used for demon raising. Nice.”

“I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.”

“Can the flowers refuse to grow, or the birds decline to sing again just because the winter was harsh?No--but I don't know how they do it, how they keep growing”

“Maryam closed her eyes and listened as Noruz began. 'You know that every spring, crocuses grow in the courtyard outside. They come from the dirt, green shoots from nothing. One day the flowers come purple as night, the nights when we were young. And inside the petals, saffron grows the color of blood. Then they die, and the ground is dirt again where chickens shit. That's the way of things: saffron, shit, saffron, shit.' Maryam smiled at the word in Noruz's mouth. 'I was sad and Dr. Ahlavi told me this: to remember that saffron comes from the dirt.”

“The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.”