I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.

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

Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable?

of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.

Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?