I was describing Spargelfest in Germany to a friend and they asked me, “What makes white asparagus different?”

I said, “They take a Bane approach. It’s cultivated in darkness.”

Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but blinding!

• Asparagus Bane