cactus quotes

This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  'The Hollow Men'.

Here one is in Later Life, and it's perfectly pleasant really, not for a moment that garden of cactus and sour grapes I'd always assumed it must be.

-James Ingram Merrill
  Letter to a friend at age 46.