“I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.”

“The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.”

“Happiness must be grown in one's own garden.”

“I fear I shall never be…good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.”

“I soon learned that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write write write.”

“No gardener, no garden!”

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he”

“The idea that paradise, the proper habitat of a human being, is a walled garden – is a good one. It's an echo back to the chaos/order idea. Walls: culture. Garden: nature. The proper human habitat is a properly tended garden.”

“But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”