“I don't know if nice people tend to grow roses, or growing roses tends to make people nice.”

“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

“Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

“People grow couches and bikes and concrete in their front gardens instead of roses.”

“She could have taken root. She wanted to be a Rose, somebody’s Rose, their Rose—and she would have been company for the flowers. She had new memories to give them, new people to tell them of, people who would help tend to them and keep them. But they warned her. They saved her. Hazel was nobody’s Rose. For better or for worse.”

“I like to think of people as roses, as they grow older, they slowly and unwillingly start giving up on life, even though they want it. I like to think of people as roses, because I think that they don’t know how lovely they could be sometimes. And that they’re meant to die, but they do their best to give pleasure to others’ eyes and hearts.”