"I have visited my mother in the southwest--she lives there for her health-- and it was an opportunity to see Texas and get acquainted with the environs of San Antonio. I observed these various cactus specimens around that vicinity and this one was largely determined by the century plant that blooms every one hundred years and at night. That gives you a sense of the delicacy of the structure. If it were to bloom during the day it would just shrivel up. It took a century for that to occur and what I was fascinated by were all the environmental accouterments of this plant life, really very menacing, very tough and hardy and could perhaps survive any number of circumstances that even a hardy plant could never quite cope with, then suddenly after a century it gives out with this beautiful bloom at night. It is quite a moving thing to experience."

[Theodore Roszak, Interview with Elliott, 1956, p. 19]