“Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.”

“Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Orchidaceae' was her first word.”

“This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.”

“Here you are, obsessed with romantic language-a language invented for expression between lovers-and you use it to spread animosity.”

“It wasn't as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that...expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.”