“You haven’t changed at all,” I said to her, and she said, “You’re so much older than you were!” Then I asked her, “Why haven’t you changed?” and she said, “Because the year I had this face, the month I wore these clothes, and the day I had my hair like this is my favourite time of all.” “What time is that?” I asked her. “The day we met twenty years ago,” she said. I wondered to myself, “Then why have I aged like this?” and she told me, “Because you wanted to go on changing, moving toward something more and more beautiful.” Then I said to her, “You are a painting,” and she said, “You are a poem.”

- Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō