Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory.

Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.

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.

Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.