Lend your ears to the deaf, your eyes to the blind, your hands to the weak, your tongue to the mute, your mind to the perplexed, and your heart to the weary.

A genuine smile is one of the world’s rarest treasures.

A fish that is afraid of drowning in a river is ignorant of its gifts.

A diamond earns its sparkle from the pressure it endures.

It is in the storm, not the calm, that a rainbow is born.

A determined seed cannot be hidden from the world, not even by dirt.

Calm skies don't make skillful eagles.

If you cry in the rain, only the sky will see your tears.

Birds keep singing beautiful songs, even if they have no audience.

Today's storms help you appreciate tomorrow’s sunshine.

Train the ears to hear more, the eyes to see more, the hands to do more, the feet to accomplish more, the mind to think more, the heart to feel more, and the soul to love more.

It is a pity that dead men are still impacting the world while men who are still alive are wasting away, roaming the world without an understanding of what to do with their time.

If you have had a bad day, remember that tomorrow is a wonderful gift and a new chance to try again.

Men argue nature acts.

Some pursue happiness others create it.

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.

Beautiful. He'd called her beautiful. Nobody had ever called her that before, except her mother, which didn't count. Mothers were required to think you were beautiful.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.

When you are at home, even if the chicken is a little burnt, what's the big deal? Relax.

The self-righteous rule out the possibility that they are what has gone wrong.

I feel like I write about life and love and death; it's just what I gravitate towards.