I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.

Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.

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.

My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they’d nearly drowned out everything else.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

I've lived my life again just telling it to you.

Passion can quickly slip to jealousy, or even hatred.