Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.

Here again, I saw life in all its noisy excitement passing me by.

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

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

Couldn't the wrong sort of living turn anyone mean? I remembered very well that one day back in Yoroido, a boy pushed me into a thorn bush near the pond. By the time I clawed my way out I was mad enough to bite through wood. If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.