"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."
"Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it."
"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."
"Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one."
"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."
"If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was."