37 Quotes by Jessica Francis Kane

Why do I like gardening? Because I worry I've inherited a certain hopelessness, a potentially fatal lack of interest, that I'm diseased with reserve. Making a garden runs counter to all that. You can't garden without thinking about the future.

When we were finished eating, I showed Leo some of the other campus gardens. At the crescent rose bed, I stopped to smell a floribunda rose. Leo waited, then leaned over to smell the exact same flower, as if, despite all the blooms around us, I had found the best one.

... avarice, envy, pride, lust, and wrath harm others, and gluttony is bad for your health. But sloth is just a willingness to move slower than others and that's not a crime.

Better to take the train, where I can watch the trees rush by, though so many were in bad shape from pruning and storms, they started to make me sad, Do trees regret their lot? The ones in cities or growing along forgotten margins? Do they dream of dark nights and quiet forests?

My grandfather...The last thing he said to my mother was "Your mother loves you"...Years later it occurred to me that when someone says what my grandfather did, what they mean, what would be far more accurate, is "She is trying to love you as best she can." This might be okay with you, or it might now be what you need at all...and now I am forty years old...I don't have a daughter and I don't know if I ever will. But if I do, we will not carry this sadness forward. I'm tired of holding it.

Perhaps a best friend is someone who... holds the story of your life in mind. Sometimes in music a melodic line is so beautiful the notes feel inevitable; you can anticipate the next note through the long rest. Maybe that is friendship. A best friend holds your story in mind so notes don’t have to be repeated.

How can we live in a time when social media makes us friends with people all over the world, but our sense of neighbor is shrinking?

Neighbor seems to me a flexible word. You can say “She’s my neighbor.” and people will think you mean she’s your friend. But if something goes wrong, you can say, “Oh I don’t really know her. She’s just my neighbor,” and everyone still knows what you mean.

Why do I like gardening? Because I worry I’ve inherited a certain hopelessness, a potentially fatal lack of interest, that I’m diseased with reserve. Making a garden runs counter to all that. You can’t garden without thinking about the future.