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.

The corridor couldn't have smelled more strongly of fish guts if we had actually been inside a fish.

If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.

You know, the men go to tea houses with the expectation that they will have a nice quiet evening and not read about it the next morning in the newspaper.

of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will.

I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.

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.