And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. 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.

Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

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.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.