"They call it Bird Pepper because it's so hot only birds can eat it because they don't have taste buds."
- Gardener at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

"... the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to it's culture; especially a bread grain. Next in value to bread, is oil."
- Thomas Jefferson

"At my lunch break, I'd buy a sandwich from the machine in our vendeteria. Apparently it used to be a real cafeteria with 'the greatest fries,' but then someone decided that wasn't quite sad enough and it was grim-ovated into a room full of vending machines."
- Tina Fey on her first post UVA job in Bossypants, p. 74 

Architectural Declaration of Independence

Monticello

oculus

"The light of reason to banish superstition."

An earlier reference to the Pantheon's oculus here.

University of Virginia image source here.

does not give interviews

Cy Twombly [born 1928] was inspired by Rilke's [1875-1926] poem "Les Roses."

XVI

Let’s not talk about you.
You are ineffable by nature.
Other flowers decorate the table
that you transfigure.

One puts you into a simple vase—,
and everything changes;
it’s perhaps the same phrase
but sung by an angel.

Earlier references to Twombly here, to Rilke here.