Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.

And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

Friendship is a precious thing, Sayuri. One mustn't throw it away.

We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.

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

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

His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn't really his face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all of the branches. He had to struggle constantly to manage it and always looked worn out from the effort.