"The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers, dried sunflowers, rattling against a wall"
About this Quote
The “noise of flowers” and the “smell of birds” sound like lyrical synesthesia until Jones reveals the mechanism: chickens and dried sunflowers scraping a wall. That punchline does double duty. It punctures pretension (no mystic garden, just a farmyard improvisation), and it celebrates how art gets made: with substitutions, cheats, and clever re-framing. It’s the same logic behind a Looney Tunes gag where a painted tunnel becomes real for one character and solid rock for another. Reality is negotiable; the joke lives in who gets to renegotiate it.
Subtextually, Jones is also defending a working-class surrealism against the idea that imagination requires luxury. The surprise isn’t mere whimsy - it’s a democratic trick, available to anyone with attention and timing. O. Henry’s legacy, filtered through a director famous for precision and snap, becomes a manifesto: delight comes from the moment the audience realizes they’ve been looking at the right thing through the wrong assumption.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Jones, Chuck. (2026, February 16). The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers, dried sunflowers, rattling against a wall. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-author-o-henry-taught-me-about-the-value-of-54188/
Chicago Style
Jones, Chuck. "The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers, dried sunflowers, rattling against a wall." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-author-o-henry-taught-me-about-the-value-of-54188/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers, dried sunflowers, rattling against a wall." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-author-o-henry-taught-me-about-the-value-of-54188/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
