We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.

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.

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.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

Do not compete with anyone.

Try to avoid getting involved with somebody who's gonna need killing before it's over. It may seem to you that that narrows the field somewhat, but be diligent.

Who gave you a gun?''The army.''Why?''That's what the army does, Simon.

My grandmother was from Guelph, Ont. I grew up playing ice hockey, I'm a massive fan. A great-uncle who was in the early days of the NHL played for the Chicago Blackhawks.

I ain't never nervous. Never nervous.

Love, love will tear us apart, again.

Before you start pointing fingers, make sure your hands are clean.

I had to learn to value myself before I could expect to be valued by others

The sleep of a sick man has keen eyes. It is a sleep unsleeping.

In a way, art has always been my way of problem-solving, of getting through situations, of finding my response to things, so to imagine doing something else makes me panic a little bit.