Sadness Was A Very Heavy Thing.

Yet Somehow The Thing That Startled Me Most, After A Week Or Two Had Passed, Was That I Had In Fact Survived.

Adversity Is Like A Strong Wind. I Don't Mean Just That It Holds Us Back From Places We Might Otherwise Go. It Also Tears Away From Us All But The Things That Cannot Be Torn, So That Afterward We See Ourselves As We Really Are.

Geisha Because When I Was Living In Japan, I Met A Fellow Whose Mother Was A Geisha, And I Thought That Was Kind Of Fascinating And Ended Up Reading About The Subject Just About The Same Time I Was Getting Interested In Writing Fiction.

And When I Raised Myself To Look At The Man Who'd Spoken, I Had A Feeling Of Leaving My Misery Behind Me There On The Stone Wall.

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.