We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.

This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it

What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realized I'd never really tasted to things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like the dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

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.

An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.