We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.

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.

... just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic... See, they have a beautiful life.

I do not like to repeat successes I like to go on to other things.

Every character in a story, I thought when I had folded up the phone, has both a purpose and a secret purpose.

I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.

The authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn.

Jesus is interested in changing cultures, not just putting bodies in chairs.

The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global.

I can't even think of the words of what I'm feeling. This man [Prince] was my everything, we had a family. I am beyond deeply saddened and devastated.

Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if.