“Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya.”

“Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.”

“In a toxic, festering sort o' way... ”

“I love life, even when bad things happen to me. I can't stop loving it. Every season of the year comes with a promise that something wonderful is going to happen to me someday.”

“He had put so much space behind him that he had finally reached that place at which the past was indeed another country, the future was unimportant, only today existed, and even today merely unfolded, minute by minute.”

“…women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.”

“Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.”