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.

When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife.

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.

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.

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

I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar.