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“you always felt they were pawns in an indifferent universe, butts of an existential joke with no punch line.”
― Poppy Z. Brite

“... Up telephone poles,

Which rear, half out of leavage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows

At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so,

As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
The night the Kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead.
Silence has grown oriental
And you cannot step upon the ground...

ALL: Kudzu by James Dickey”
― James Dickey

“Bitsy seems unimpressed, even when I describe the big campaign.
"You sound like Whitman," she says, slow and monotone. "Work, work, work."
I don't react. Instead, I reply by asking about her husband, Whitman Strayer II, a med-school dropout turned venture capitalist who now helps Oxford's elite decide what to do with all their money.
"He's fine." She adds nothing more.
"Still traveling a lot? Last I heard he was partnering with investors in Atlanta? Birmingham? Dallas? Looking for start-ups."
"Yep. As I said, he's fine." She gives me a glance that warns me to back off, so I turn my attention back to the landscape, eager to drink in every gift Mississippi offers.
Behind the picnic table, a batch of invasive kudzu has crept in from a steep ravine. With no natural balance to keep it in check, the Asian species now abuses its power, growing thick, leafy webs across everything in reach. Even the trees with the deepest roots have fallen victim to this vicious vine.
As Bitsy's words echo, I wonder what lesson the kudzu wants to teach me. Have I, too, done better in foreign soil, opting to go far from the challenging conditions of home? Have I been able to thrive out there in Arizona, living without any real competition? Or am I nothing more than a wayward transplant, an aimless seed taking more than my fair share?”
― Julie Cantrell, Perennials

“Have you ever seen the veins in your arm or the way your lungs look when you breathe? The capillaries, all the little tubes—they look like the branches of a tree. You can see the parallels, the sameness that you see in the human form.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“We’re all connected. We’re all stardust. We’re all energy. At our core, we are all the same.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“I have an emotional attachment to it all. The earth. The sky. I’ve studied it all my life. And it hurts me whenever somebody hurts this, out here. My home.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“I am a patchwork American, strung together by DNA strands from distant places. Meant to exist in the margins. These are my labels, my unshakeable question marks. Belonging to no one, with nowhere to belong. I am still struggling to understand where I fall, where I fit. Am I invasive?”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“Kudzu is no more a harbinger of devastation, a damning curse that befell the land, than I am.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“The air is charged, the beings making up the forest biome thrumming to a beat I can’t quite understand.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“After all, the vine is still wrapped around the outside of her home, rows of large sheets of arresting leaves embracing the columns of her front porch, both spilling inside and trailing out to the waiting world beyond her doorstep.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“Just one tendril, leaping toward the dawn of a better horizon, at a time.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“Like kudzu, we have been stamped as something to shun. Like kudzu, we have thrived in areas we are unwanted, despite resistance to our existence. Like kudzu, we have persisted.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“You can’t escape the cultural associations embodied by plants. You can’t have one without the other.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South

“Woven within the wild expanse of greenery is a timeless relic, a bewildering being enshrouded in over a century of magic and mystery.”
― Ayurella Horn-Muller, Devoured: The Extraordinary Story of Kudzu, the Vine That Ate the South