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.

Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.

Geisha is always called beautiful even if she is not.

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

Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.