We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.

You know, the men go to tea houses with the expectation that they will have a nice quiet evening and not read about it the next morning in the newspaper.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.

Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.