Murasaki Shikibu

Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.

Who has told you that the fruit belies the flower? For the fruit you have not tasted, and the flower you know but by report.

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.

In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.