“Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?”

I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.

Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

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.

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

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.

Today is unique! It has never occurred and it will never be repeated. At midnight it will end, quietly, suddenly, totally. Forever. But the hours between now and then are opportunities with eternal possibilities.

The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

Everything turns out okay in the end, so what is the point in worrying?

I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.

The warmth is spring is near. It smells of hope and cheer. The budding bulbs of daffodils will end the endless fear.

God has no beginning and no end.

Bad beginnings, bad endings.

The hardest goodbyes are the ones you never got to say.