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

What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

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

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are.

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

Passion can quickly slip to jealousy, or even hatred.