My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.

I am a particular fan of integrative exercise - that is exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening bicycling to work doing home improvement projects and so on.

I've come to recognize what I call my 'inside interests.' Telling stories. And helping people tell their stories is a sort of interpersonal gardening. My work at NBC News was to report the news but in hindsight I often tried to look for some insight to share that might spark a moment of recognition in a viewer.

I loathe gardening but I love gardens and I have two beautiful gardens. I can not bear gardening but I love gardens.

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.

Gardening is not a rational act.

How deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening.

All gardening is landscape painting.

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt head in the sun heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body but the soul.

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.

Gardening is how I relax. It's another form of creating and playing with colors.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is gardening is just the opposite - it is or should be a central basic expression of human life.

I love a lot of things and I'm pretty much obsessive about most things I do whether it be gardening or architecture or music. I'd be an obsessive hairdresser.

I don't divide architecture landscape and gardening to me they are one.