Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?

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

And when I raised myself to look at the man who'd spoken, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall.

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.

Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

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.