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….

In the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never bef….

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring 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 dr….

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the th….

I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think ….

If those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I'd be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eye….

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new cou….

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 ….

I've lived my life again just telling it to you..

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar..

A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory..

Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while..

By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long..

The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way ….

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

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world..

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? ….

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it..

When a man takes a mistress, he doesn't turn around and divorce his wife..