“Flowers represent hope for us; but we do not represent hope for them! Let us keep the flowers in the soil; no plucking!”

“You want to do something good for the flowers? Then, keep the flowers in the soil, in nowhere else!”

“She liked to scatter hope," Minerva said, taking his offering."Pardon?""Snowdrops. They represent hope. The first flowers in the spring. Hope for a new beginning." She took a sniff of the delicate blossoms and then shyly glanced over at him. "Perhaps you were meant to be here today. To find your hope.”

“Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.”

“It is a huge danger to pretend that awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep going. I am trying to make hope. Flowers grow out of darkness.”

“Flowers are the beautiful hairs of the Mother Spring! Don’t pluck them!”