By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long.

A wounded tiger is a dangerous beast.

Memoirs give the knowledge about the author and his environment. They are different from biography. Memoirs do not get ahead, and the man who writes a biography looks at his future like at a very simple thing.

A geisha has studied a man's moods and his seasons. She fusses and he blooms.

Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.

Nothing is as bleak as the future, except the past.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.