Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

Here’s what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. “Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs...

Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I’m told. It’s in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can’t trust anything they haven’t seen with their own eyes or touched with...

This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.

Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters,...

Dreams are things from the past. They aren’t from the future. That wasn’t you imprisoned there. You imprison your dreams. You understand?Yeah, I’d say. But I wasn’t convinced.

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can’t see.

The heart apparently doesn’t stop that easily.

There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can’t. And time passing is one thing that can’t be undone. Come this far, and you can’t go back.

The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed – everything around him felt changed, as if they...

Coba kau pikirkan baik-baik. Kondisi semua orang sama saja. Sama seperti ketika kita naik pesawat rusak. Tentu saja di situ ada orang yang bernasib baik dan bernasib buruk. Ada yang tangguh, ada juga yang lemah;...

Well, finally, once you become an orphan, you’re an orphan till the day you die. I keep having the same dream. I’m seven years old and an orphan again. All alone, with no adults around...

El destino se lleva siempre su parte y no se retira hasta obtener lo que le corresponde.

Every once in a while she’ll get worked up and cry like that. But that’s ok. She’s letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build...

It seemed unreasonable, unfair, that a woman so young and beautiful should be so exhausted. Of course, it was neither unreasonable nor unfair. Exhaustion pays no mind to age and beauty. Like rain and earthquakes...

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of...

I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the...

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That’s what I think. It’s just a form of sincerity.

With luck, it might even snow for us.

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose–a gleaming, round saucer–over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly...

It’s a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But...

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful...

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not...

In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn’t tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon...

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.

The journey I’m taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I’m seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.

I think serious readers of books are 5% of the population. If there are good TV shows or a World Cup or anything, that 5% will keep on reading books very seriously, enthusiastically. And if...

Not just beautiful, though–the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.

To conserve energy, her little planet stopped spinning.

If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why?...

I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can...

When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.

it’s a fine moon’, she repeated

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn’t tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn’t fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and...

…most people in the world don’t really use their brains to think. And people who don’t think are the ones who don’t listen to others.

I’m still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong...

For me- and for everybody else, probably- this is my first experience growing old, and the emotions I’m having, too, are all first-time feelings. If it were something I’d experienced before, then I’d be able...

All I know is I’m totallyalone. All alone i n an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know,...

I learned there were lots of realities in the world.

Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us – is rewritten...

The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place...

She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I’ve been lonely for so long. And I’ve been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn’t have had to take all these detours to...

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

You know what I should do?” Hoshino asked excited. “Of course,” the cat said. “What’d I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.

There are symbolic dreams– dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities — realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In...

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone...

People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world...