Yasunari Kawabata: Thousand Cranes

“Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?"
"You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.”


“Now, even more than the evening before, he could think of no one with whom to compare her. She had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate.”


“You've always been fond of understanding people too well."
"They should arrange not to be understood quite so easily.”


In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning.


“Your mother was such a gentle person. I always feel when I see someone like her that I'm watching the last flowers fall. This is no world for gentle people.”


“Anyway, it’s hardly a problem worth worrying about.”