My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart...

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness

sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.

It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.

What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Kafka is one of my very favorite writers. Kafka's fictional world is already so complete that trying to follow in his steps is not just pointless, but quite risky, too. What I see myself doing, rather, is writing novels where, in my own way, I dismantle the fictional world of Kafka that itself dismantled the existing novelistic system.

So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?

We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.

Probably." "Again with the probablys." "A world full of probablys," she said.

It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness." "You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.

Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.

One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.

I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

My point is: in this whole wide world the only person you can depend on is you.

The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right?

The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn't going to be veryuseful in the real world, that's for sure.

I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.

[...] Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter.

Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.

It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.

Let the world move along as it pleased. If it had any business with him, it would be sure to tell him.

I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.

It's a terrible thing when a person dies, whatever the circumstances. A hole opens up in the world, and we need to pay the proper respects. If we don't, the hole will never be filled in again.

The young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.

What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, “It’s all your fault!

Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished.

Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works.

Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.

Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.

she was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest.

You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler.

It's not me but the world that's deranged.

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.

No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.