Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment.

When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don’t. And when they’re running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn’t seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

But hell, you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.

If only I could fallsound asleep and wake up in my old reality!

Shimamoto was in charge of the records. She’d take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure to brush the cartridge free...

Walking to the subway, Aomame kept thinking about the strangeness of the world. If, as the dowager had said, we were nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such...

E se a minha vida não fôr mais do que um processo de materialização, através do qual eu dou forma a imagens latentes que vivem adormecidas em mim?

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

I’d like to have a good long talk with you once you’ve calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.

Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I...

I don’t know, it’s stupid being 20,” she said. “I’m just not ready. It feels weird. Like somebody’s pushing me from behind.

What happens when people open their hearts?””They get better.

They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn’t care what happened....

It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep...

If I do tell you the story, the two of us will always share it. And I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. if I lift open the lid now, you’ll be...

As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students’ heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world’s riddles...

I’d always thought that the earth on which I stood was a solid object that would last forever. Or rather, I’d never thought about such a thing at all. I’d simply taken it for granted.

Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets,...

Quiero llegar hasta donde pueda empleando todas mis fuerzas. Tomando lo que quiero, dejando lo que no quiero. Así es como vivo. Si meto la pata, me detengo y lo reconsidero. Si uno le da...

In the novelist’s profession, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics’ praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature,...

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet...

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.

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance.

If you’re young and talented, it’s like you have wings.

People who’s freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don’t want to live like that.

Tendencies. Yougottendencies. Soevenifyoudideverythingoveragain, yourwholelife, yougottendenciestodojustwhatyoudid, alloveragain. -The Sheep Man.

We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse. It poses only a limited range of possibilities.

it occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It’s just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to...

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more...

You’re afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can...

A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made....

It’s not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.

There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.

Nos dimos la mano y nos separamos. Él se dirigió hacia su nuevo mundo y yo volví a mi lodazal.

Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them...

If I choose to write about sheep, it’s just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.

Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.

They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn’t the other way around—the thing gets more and more like its name.

The world’s crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that will never come true.

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye

Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.

Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is...

Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?””I guess it depends on how you die.

I write weird stories. I don’t know why I like weirdness so much. Myself, I’m a very realistic person. I don’t trust anything New Age — or reincarnation, dreams, Tarot, horoscopes. I don’t trust anything...

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That’s what can move the world....

I sat on a somewhat higher sand dune and watched the eastern sky. Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then...

When pain comes to me, I leave my physical self. It’s just like quietly slipping into the next room when someone you don’t want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I...