I've lived my life again just telling it to you.

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

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.

By the time we arrived, as evening was approaching, I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long.

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.

We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence.

If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

Nonviolence is kindling light of love into the dark places and budding trust from the threshold of hopelessness.

Find something you love and follow it back to loving yourself.

You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

Time is more important to me than money.

I've long ago learned that if an idea will stand on its own, it'll stand having the light shone on it. But if you shine light on it and it kind of withers, then it probably wasn't a very good idea.

Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.

The way I relax is I think, 'I haven't got anything coming up.' I like to know there are months ahead when I've got nothing.

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Anything easy teaches you nothing! To learn something, have some difficulties!