For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I’d always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness– a world in which fathers didn’t...

Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn’t it

And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

Oh I’m sure you’re right,” Auntie said. “Probably she’s just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day...

El conocimiento pasa de la maestra a la estudiante mediante un proceso denominado mane. Aunque este término se traduce a menudo por “imitación”, el aprendizaje de la danza va más allá de la simple copia...

I was performing my ritual of sipping tea, shooting flirtatious glances and planning murder

What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish – our envy of those better off...

When I was a nursemaid at the home of the landowners, a nun who happened to pass once gave me something square and white.Timidly I licked it and discovered that it was sweet and delicious....

If you aren’t the woman I think you are, then this isn’t the world I thought it was.

When someone who’s starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?

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.

For myself I don’t like the geisha look. It’s like a mask.