"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."
"Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret 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."
"We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course."
"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."