Elliott Flower

“It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks””

“Out West all the smells are sucked up out of the baked land by the sun. And it’s as if all the colors in the ground are gobbled up by their sunsets, and so is the blue of the sky. The sky is high and pale and impersonal and you get the feeling it doesn’t belong to you at all, but that it is the property of the chamber of commerce. In the South the sky is humid and low and rich and it’s yours to smell and feel. In the West you’re only an observer. In the West someone sees a flower growing on a mountain and he writes a whole damned pamphlet about it.””

“I have cancer,” Agnes announced. She hadn’t been able to contain her rage after all. She didn’t expect it to come out that way”