An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.

A mouse who wishes to fool the cat doesn't simply scamper out of its hole whenever it feels the slightest urge.

Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

Seeing him again after so long awakened something inside me. I was surprised to find myself feeling sad rather than joyful, as I would have imagined.

I could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you.

His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn't really his face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all of the branches. He had to struggle constantly to manage it and always looked worn out from the effort.

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar.