We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.

I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.

But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.

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

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

Finally the homeless eel marked its territory, I suppose, and the Doctor lay heavily upon me, moist with sweat.