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

Sadness was a very heavy thing.

If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together.

Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

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