“I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.”

Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.

Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed…” (p. 141).

But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.

This is what it means to be loved… when someone wants to touch you, to be tender.

Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.

Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.

Inching one’s way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can’t take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that

Over and over, we begin again.

Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.

Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.

The night glittered brilliantly then.

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.

Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.

People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.

This bill is the legislative equivalent of crack. It yields a short-term high but does long-term damage to the system and it’s expensive to boot.

I have no problem whatsoever with allowing gay people to live as they please, as long as they don’t try to impose their lifestyle on everyone else.

I’M HOPELESS, because I’ve lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I’m not surprised and at some point my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

I’m out and about meeting people all day long. And I’m very friendly; I talk to just about everybody I meet.

When I entered high school I was an A-student, but not for long. I wanted the fancy clothes. I wanted to hang out with the guys.

There are things one does not say for a long time, but, once they are said, one never stops repeating them.

Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can’t do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.