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.

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

How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.

When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.

Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.