Sadness was a very heavy thing.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

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.

He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.

A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.