One Thousand Summers

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. − Haruki Murakami,  A Wild Sheep Chase

"In autumn, the evening - the blazing sun has sunk very close to the mountain rim, and now even the crows, in threes and fours or twos and threes, hurrying to their roost, are a moving sight." From Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book". Chapter I. In spring, the dawn. .. Translation by Meredith McKinney, Penguin Classics, 2006

In poetry there are no teachers. One makes antiquity one’s teacher. Provided he steep his mind in the styles of antiquity and learn his diction from the great poets of old, who can fail to compose good poetry?   − Fujiwara no Teika, Eiga no taigai  詠歌大概 ( Essentials of Poetic Composition)  As quoted in Conversations with Shōtetsu , translated by Robert Brower