The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

first published 1872) and Camille

the icing on the cake at his first birthday. I have only the testimony of Isaac’s face to go by (that, and his fierceness to repeat the experience), but it was plain that his first encounter with sugar had intoxicated him—was in fact an ecstasy, in the literal sense of that word. That is, he was beside himself with the pleasure of it, no longer her

Great art is born when Apollonian form and Dionysian ecstasy are held in balance, when our dreams of order and abandon come together.