As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.

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.

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

I want my country to be trusted. I don't want anybody running for president telling the unions what they want to hear at the expense of the credibility of the United States.

Remember, whenever a Republican leaves one side of the aisle and goes to the other, it raises the intelligence quotient of both parties.

You know, honestly - look, I'm not a journalist. This is the first, you know, tragedy that I have covered on the air.

I don't think many actors are the best judge of careers. I think generally we have good instincts about what we can do in terms of acting. And often they become directors, which I don't want to be.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

Paris is one of the largest, and certainly it is the pleasantest, of modern American cities.

There is no greater illness than discouragement!