“Reading books about gardens is a potent pastime; books nourish a gardener's mind in the same way as manure nourishes plants.”

“I'm not a garden expert in any sense of the meaning, only someone who blunders about in the shrubbery.”

“He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all”

“just as you would not neglect seeds that you planted with hope that they will bear vegetables and fruits and flowers so you must attend to nourish the garden of your becoming.”

“One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.”

“Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.”

“You're not a gardener, are you? So perhaps you don't know that once a garden is established, much of good gardening is about removal rather than planting, honing what you have to produce a pleasing effect, sacrificing the particular for the good of the whole. Gardening is a creative pastime, but the result is always a work in progress; unlike a painting or a piece of music a garden is never fixed in time. ("In The Garden")”