Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of 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.

Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.

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

Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe.

The corridor couldn't have smelled more strongly of fish guts if we had actually been inside a fish.

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.