"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains."