“I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizard, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the color seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendor. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.”

“They had a crush on you, River
Blue suede jacket and boots, River
And your face shaped like a moon, River
You were like my own James Byron Dean
Private idaho was my east of eden
Hit me like a stone when you passed away
On Halloween”

“As full as a piper's bag; as a tick.
As full as a toad is of poison.
As full as a jade, quoth the bride.
As gant as a greyhound.
As glad as a fowl of a fair day.
To go like a cat upon a hot bake-stone.
To go out like a candle in a snuff.
As good as George of Green.
To go like a cat upon a hot bake-stone.”

“Who likes wrinkles?
No one, however remember the laughter, happiness and joy
that created those beautiful marks.
Tell me…would you rather have smooth skin like a cold stone or to see ripples in it from years of happily sitting in a river of running water with the hot sun beating down upon it?”

“How shall I tell what I saw? The towers are not all broken — here and there one still stands, like a great tree in a forest, and the birds nest high. But the towers themselves look blind, for the gods are gone. I saw a fishhawk, catching fish in the river. I saw a little dance of white butterflies over a great heap of broken stones and columns. I went there and looked about me — there was a carved stone with cut — letters, broken in half. I can read letters but I could not understand these. They said UBTREAS. There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman's. His name was ASHING, as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ASHING, though I do not know that god.”

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

“Like to a stone
That rolls down a hill,
I have come to this day.”

“To stand out in the crowd I liked the color purple.”

“The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.”

“When on the ground red apples lie there
in piles like jewels shining
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbines twining”