“At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”

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

“I could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you.”

“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?”

“Well, a peach has a lovely taste and so does a mushroom, but you can't put the two together...”

“You cannot say to the sun, 'More sun,' or to the rain, 'Less rain.' To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.”

“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.”