It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.

She paints her face to hide her face. Her eyes are deep water. It is not for Geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings. She entertains you, whatever you want. The rest is shadows, the rest is secret.

Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.

Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable?

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

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.

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