“I am dead to them, even though I once flowered.”

“Beneath and around the dead and ruined chaparral rise the most amazingly beautiful flowers. Tulips and wind poppies and flame poppies, whispering bells and suncups. These are flowers that grow only after a burn. Only in a land once dead. You never see them otherwise When my eyes closed I can see those flowers now. They are a promise: that the land will regrow, that even after a disaster life continues, that wonders abound. k”

“But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,If I am dead, as dead I well may be,You'll come and find the place where I am lying,And kneel and say Ave there for me,And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,For you will bend and tell me that you love me,And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me”

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.”

“At least I have the flowers of myself,and my thoughts, no godcan take that;I have the fervour of myself for a presenceand my own spirit for light;and my spirit with its lossknows this;though small against the black,small against the formless rocks,hell must break before I am lost;before I am lost,hell must open like a red rosefor the dead to pass.”

“(Why flowers are so important to the main character) I need the reminder that God loves to make detailed and beautiful things, and that act of creation is itself a sufficient reason to make them. These flowers will live and die here, the majority of them never seen, even though a busy road is less than a mile away.”