“Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.”

“It had been a windy night, that night where his life had taken its turning. The atmosphere, in flood, was trying to wash the trees right off the hills. The big oaks twisted and shuddered like black flames in the moonlight, and the white grass rippled and bannered.The wind that night made him feel his chronic longing. The wind, trying to stampede the trees, was roaring for a grand, universal departure to another solar system, a better deal, and the grass struggled to join the rootless giant of the air. All that lives strives to fly, to master time. All tribes of beings strain to rise in insurrection, all knowing their time is short, all, when the wind blows, wanting to climb aboard. ("The Growlimb")”

“A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.”

“A tree grows into the air because it grows out of the air. The bulk of the tree is not made from the soil beneath- indeed, the soil is in large part made by the tree. Both soil and tree are made from the sun and wind and rain. The land is just a place to stand.”

“The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,And they did make no noise, in such a night,Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents,Where Cressid lay that night.”

“To a BoyBoy,you are a hidden watering place under the treeswhere, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyesappear one after another.Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenlyand a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,it is only a premonition.The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,crowned with a swirling night,still continues in your dark place.─Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato”