Holly

“She admired how thin and delicate Rebecca was. "Like a long-stemmed rose," she said.
I said, "She's more like a long piece of hair with hair.”
― Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

“To grow old is to know that not circumstances but consciousness makes the happy and the sad.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Time of the Angels

“In the wild, there are two types of cat populations," I tell him when he finishes his move. "Residents and transients. Some stay put, in their fixed home ranges, and others are on the move. They don't have real homes. Everybody always thought that the ones who establish the territories are the most successful--like the capitalists who get ahold of Park Place. They are the strongest, while the transients are the bums, the losers." ... I continue bravely. "The thing is--this is what the scientists are wondering about now--it may be that the transients are the superior ones after all, with the greatest curiosity and most intelligence. They can't decide.”
― Bobbie Ann Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories

“I hate it when our human attempts to inflict order upon the land bring death and pain and mutilation to these innocents, whose ancestors enjoyed the earth for tens of millions of years before the naked ape appeared with his technology and enraging awareness of his own sin.”
― John Updike, Toward the End of Time