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

My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they’d nearly drowned out everything else.

Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction.

We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.

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

A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.

Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.