He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

We human beings have a remarkable way of growing accustomed to things.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

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

But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.

The prettiest of them all is a girl who is pretty on the inside.

We can never flee the misery that is within us.