“It was odd how Aritomo's life seemed to glance off mine; we were like two leaves falling from a tree, touching each other now and again as they spiraled to the forest floor.”

“Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer.”

“The tree of life is already doomed from the moment it is planted.”

“Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.”

“A garden is composed of a variety of clocks, Aritomo had once told me. Some of them run faster than the others, and some of them move slower than wee can ever perceive. I only understood this fully long after I had been his apprentice.”

“We were like two moths around a candle, I thought, circling closer and closer to the flame, waiting to see whose wings would catch fire first.”

“The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is a misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still travelling towards those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.”