“All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.”

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.

Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!

Old pond, frog jumps in – plop.

The journey itself is my home.

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.

First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair’s breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

The stillest tongue can be the truest friend.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Friends are nothing but a known enemy.

A True friend is one who sees a fault, gives you advice and who defends you in your absence.

Friends, music, and food is a combination that makes this world an even more beautiful place.

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.

The realest people don’t have a lot of friends.

We all need somebody to lean on.