THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.

I suppose even a woman's hatred is a kind of love.

A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.

Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty.

Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.