Happiness comes from growing what thrives, not merely survives.

Be pleased with your real garden, don't persue the perfection of a picture. What you see in a photo lasted only as long as the shutter snap.

If you cut a shrub back because it's just too big, and it dies, you haven't lost anything but a plant that couldn't live by your rules.

We blame Walt Disney for goldenrod's undeserved bad name. Despite Sneezy's pronouncement, plants such as goldenrod with heavy, insect-carried pollen rarely cause allergic reaction.

Don't design your back yard from the outside looking in. Design from your window looking out.

There's no "right way" to garden, only what suits each person and place.

If a bush is too big, don't ask "should I?" Go ahead and cut it. If it lives, great. If it dies, replace it with something better suited!

Gardeners in regions with very long summer days have a great opportunity, and should use more of the cool colors that literally glow in the low light of morning and evening.

If someone says "You're not doing that right," hand him the shovel, sit and watch. That's the right way to garden.

You can put a gardener behind the wheel, but you can't keep her eyes off the landscape.

Silly gardeners! We buy pretty, comfortable benches and position them oh so carefully. But does the gardener ever sit? No! We perch momentarily and then jump up to do that next thing we see.

Sometimes the smallest things are so damn unforgivable. Maybe because they aren't small—they only seem that way to someone else. You never know what someone holds scared until it's too late.

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

When people like the path you walk and the style you walk in that path, they will start following you!

Only someone wishing to disappear would ever strive to 'fit in'.

There is only one thing people like that is good for them a good night's sleep.

The people who are buying stocks because they're going up and they don't know what they do deserve to lose money.

I'm not a natural performer. I don't like performing very much.

What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.