Nora Murphy Johnson, PhD

“Sadie, do you see this? This is a persimmon tree! This is my favorite fruit." Marx picked a fat orange persimmon from the tree, and he sat down on the now termite-free wooden deck, and he ate it, juice running down his chin. "Can you believe our luck?" Max said. "We bought a house with a tree that has my actual favorite fruit!"
Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met - he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn't truly understood the nature of Marx's good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know - were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had hey just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“A good idea has a habit of showing up again and again.”
― Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth – A Popular Science and Natural History Study of Botany

“The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by…but put them together with rhizobia and they make miracles.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

“I believed what my father told me. Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made.”
― Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars