“Being recognized for your efforts… It is an impossible task. People are not particularly interested in efforts of others. Even if they recognized your efforts, they will forget it quickly, and instead…for a much longer time, they will remember you for your mistakes.”

“Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.”

“What kind of tea do you want?""There´s more than one kind of tea?...What do you have?""Let´s see... Blueberry, Raspberry, Ginseng, Sleepytime, Green Tea, Green Tea with Lemon, Green Tea with Lemon and Honey, Liver Disaster, Ginger with Honey, Ginger Without Honey, Vanilla Almond, White Truffle Coconut, Chamomile, Blueberry Chamomile, Decaf Vanilla Walnut, Constant Comment and Earl Grey."-"I.. Uh...What are you having?... Did you make some of those up?”

“I travel pretty frequently, but a few things that are routine are going for a run, getting my green tea in the morning, and checking email... well, all the time!”

“Being recognized for your efforts… It is an impossible task. People are not particularly interested in efforts of others. Even if they recognized your efforts, they will forget it quickly, and instead…for a much longer time, they will remember you for your mistakes.”

“it is to be savored like a seabreeze-whispereddream...in the mysteriousblue minutesbefore dawnlike a secretinfatuation.... like slowlanguorous sipsof green tea... like a lingeringglimpsea self-wrappedparadiselike his name upon my lips.”

“I do not go to church. I don’t go to Christian church or Jew church or any other church. I don’t go to church at all. Not ever. A perfect Sunday for me is spent drinking green tea while reading the Sunday New York Times. Yikes! Why don’t I just turn in my Al-Qaeda membership form and call it a day? As if that wasn’t bad enough, not only do I not go to church:I don’t believe in God. How can I say the Pledge of Allegiance if I don’t believe in God? How can I spend our American currency which pledges “In God We Trust?” How can I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help me God? Answer: I can’t. It’s a real problem. Don’t get me wrong – I’d like to believe in God. I wish I did, especially if He was the kind of God that thought America was #1. But I don’t, which to many people is the same as not believing in America. Up until recently, I thought those people were lunatics.”