I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.

I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.

Most of the nations that have serious gardening cultures have, or had, empires. You can't have this luxury of pleasure without somebody paying for it. This is nice to know. It's nice to know that when you sit down to enjoy a plate of strawberries, somebody got paid very little so that you could have your strawberries. It doesn't mean the strawberries will taste different, but it's nice to enjoy things less than we do. We enjoy things far too much, and it leads to incredible pain and suffering.

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

I'm very aware that we make these decisions toward love or hate every day. I certainly don't have the stamina to live through each day making only the noblest decisions.

Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.