Gladiolus Quotes

What does a person need?' she proclaimed one day after the first spoonful of dessert. 'Not much: something sweet to eat, and a story to tell, and time and space, and gladioluses in a vase, and two friends, and two hilltops, one on which to stand and the other upon which to gaze. And two eyes for watching the heavens and waiting....

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.

A Story of Love and Faith/La Milagrosa Near-prayer and not. Pink, red flowers, orange and yellow flowers and white. In this very moment, for different reasons, this is as specific as I can be in both languages. Day of the Holy Cross-she dies, feminely, on Dia de la Cruz. Exactly who performs the miracle? The dead and buried son shimmers to his mother's dead and buried breast to suckle. Miracle. Thinking of Archimedes's bathwater, the Cuban sculptor gives her density, porelessness, in 20th-century Carrara. Exactly. It is true statues are cruel when they're not. On the edge of my cowardice, reason. Who exactly could call me by name in that cemetery? Gladiolus, ginger, lilies. Young women are a series of images. We are regimes.

Erica and Wilhelm held the entire universe between them, from the largest supergiant stars to the grains of pollen in the throat of a gladiolus.