A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory.

Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.

If those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I'd be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.

Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.

We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.