The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.

The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

I had thought everyone in the electronic world would be so laid back, but there's as many cliques and prejudices as any other world.

President Bush is in the hot seat over Iraqi pre-war intelligence. Remember the good ol' days when the only thing the president was trying to cover up was a stain?

I'm very mechanical, so if I have one thing that's going in the wrong direction when I'm hitting, it's hard for me to get a hit.

For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.

Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.

The whole thing of this business is to retain your enthusiasm and, in a sense, retain your innocence and try to practice as much humility as possible.

Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.

In the performance of a good action, we not only benefit ourselves, but we confer a blessing upon others.

Once I started playing the piano, after my first small competition, I realized that the piano was the right instrument for me.