“What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.”
Unknown Author
“Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
Unknown Author
“I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.”
Unknown Author
“I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.”
Unknown Author
“I wonder what ants do on rainy days?”
Unknown Author
“By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko's death was this: no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.”
Unknown Author
“We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.”
Unknown Author
“When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.”
Unknown Author
“Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.”
Unknown Author
“What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.”
Unknown Author
“She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She’d never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn’t a matter of pride, I think. She just did what seemed natural to her.”
Unknown Author
“Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.”
Unknown Author
“So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.”
Unknown Author
“Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.”
Unknown Author
“I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”
Unknown Author
“An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence”
Unknown Author
“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”
Unknown Author
“Where the road sloped upward beyond the trees, I sat and looked toward the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell which room was hers. All I had to do was find the one window toward the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”
“Where the road sloped upward beyond the trees, I sat and looked toward the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell which room was hers. All I had to do was find the one window toward the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”
“I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”
Unknown Author