“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”

“Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remembered how his own will had been stretched that night of his near-seppuku, when he had had to get up as a man and walk home as a man unsupported, and became samurai. And he watched her, despising the need for this courage, yet understanding it, even honoring it.”

“Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.”

“Isn't it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? Like tonight, watching all those brave men meet their fate here, on this shore, on this gentle night, through a karma ordained a thousand lifetimes ago, or perhaps even one.Isn’t it only through laughter we can stay human?”

“Isn't it only laughter we can stay human?”

“Of what real value is a title? The power is the only important thing”