After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.

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

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.

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?

I was thanking him for...well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.