"Never have I been so touched and almost moved by the sight of heather as the other day, when I found these three branches in your dear letter. Since then they have been lying in my Book of Images, penetrating it with their strong and serious smell, which is really just the fragrance of autumn earth. But how glorious it is, this fragrance. At no other time, it seems to me, does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth;"
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to his wife Clara, 13 September 1907, in Letters on Cézanne, translated by Joel Agee
