I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

I don't like things held up before me that I cannot have.

If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

My tears simply broke through the fragile wallthat had held them, and with a terrible feeling of shame, I laid my head upon the table and let them drain out of me.

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