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

Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.

I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

Nothing in life is ever as simple as we imagine.

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.

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