"I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him."
"I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world."
"Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one."
"I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories."
"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."
"Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one."