“He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it was an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did. What he did was put the fear of God into them. More precisely, the fear of Crowley. In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. "Say goodbye to your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it. . . " Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat. The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.”

“How plants grow: Quickly. Most plants grow fast and die young. People get seventy years, a bean plant gets four months, maybe five. Once the itty-bitty baby plant peeks out of the ground, it sprouts leaves, so it can absorb more sun. Then it sleeps, eats, and sunbathes until it’s ready to flower—a teenage plant. This is a bad time to be a rose or a zinnia or a marigold, because people attack with scissors and cut off what’s pretty. But plants are cool. If the rose is picked, the plant grows another one. It needs to bloom to produce more seeds.”

“Who knows why that man planted those fields? Perhaps he knew we’d need the flowers for a cure. Maybe he just thought they were beautiful, like my mother did. But we do find answers in beauty, more often than not.”

“There is nothing better than this,” he said, and I worried he was right. I worried that once something had entered you, it would never leave—he would plant himself inside me and grow and grow until I was nothing but him.”

“People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.”

“I think you need to water your plants," Garrett [Swopes, PI]called out to me [Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper and PI]."Oh, they're fake." He was looking at the plants I had along my windowsill. Either that or my mold problem was getting out of hand. After a long pause I heard, "Those are fake?""Yeah, I had to make them look real. A little spray paint, a little lighter fluid, and voila! Fake dying plants.""Why would you want fake dying plants?" he asked."Because if they were all thick and healthy-looking, anyone who knows me would realise they were fake.""Yeah, but is that really the point?""Duh.”