Well I do find the beauty in animals. I find beauty everywhere. I find beauty in my garden.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

Introduced to this world in Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, Wales, November 14, 1843, I celebrated my first anniversary by landing at Castle Garden, in New York City.

Until recently, we regarded love as supernatural. We were willing to study the brain chemistry of fear and depression and anger but not love.

At the time, 1980, people regarded actresses involved with production with a certain amount of fear, resentment and anger.

I watched a lot of avant-garde films, like Maya Deren's work, and I love film's technical ability to do things that are impossible in real life. It's related to the way collage allows you to manipulate reality and the hierarchies that are inherent in our awful but amazing world.

When you go back to the days when I was studying how to paint, some of the things that excited me most was to go into the Huntington Library and Gardens and to see the amazing pictures of the landed gentry.

I had a paint pony called Half-Pint, and I rode her in Madison Square Garden, and that was my first big show. But my first real pony was this red pony called Chantal. He was absolutely amazing. He was a great pony, except he did spin me off a couple of times! I would blink, and then I would be on the floor.

The avant-garde spirit is not just a youthful sentiment - I live my life by it.

It is dark. You cannot see. Only the hint of stars out the broken window. And a voice as old as the Snake from the Garden whispers, 'I will hold your hand.

And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.

She walked to the door with her pile of laundry. "Oh, milord? Just in case my lady is too delicate to speak of such things, and since you'll be washing yourself. Do make sure to clean well under your foreskin. A lady's perfumed garden ought to be fragrant, but a gentleman's oak should smell only of soap.

If you want to make this world a garden of peace, then you must plant seeds of love and kindness so that flowers of peace can bloom.

He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

I waited for ancient portals, hidden doors and secrets gardens through which I could commune with you.

? force de regarder les ?toiles, tu t'es mise ? aimer l'univers.

There is nothing so good for writing as doing a bit of gardening, and there is nothing so bad for gardening as being a writer.

A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.

Nearly all human cultures plant gardens, and the garden itself has ancient religious connections. For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Christian European beliefs, and the pagan devotions to sacred groves of trees and sacred springs. My German translator gave me a fascinating book on the archaeology of Old Europe, and in it I discovered ancient artifacts that showed that the Old European cultures once revered snakes, just as we Pueblo Indian people still do. So I decided to take all these elements - orchids, gladiolus, ancient gardens, Victorian gardens, Native American gardens, Old European figures of Snake-bird Goddesses - and write a novel about two young sisters at the turn of the century.

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.