I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can’t work out what’s real and what isn’t… That kind of feeling. Do you have...

Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno...

It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable tofind a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to...

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own value to live by, and the same holds true with me.

You’re wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise...

Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.

Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose,” began the man. “You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between...

I don’t deserve a girl like Hatsumi,” Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him.

Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you...

Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly...

Her words didn’t have the acrid smell of death.

Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people’s eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference.

For a while” is a phrase whose length can’t be measured.At least by the person who’s waiting.

Like Naokuo, I’m not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won’t...

How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name?

I don’t think most people would like my personality. There might be a few — very few, I would imagine- who are impressed by it, but rarely would anyone like it.

Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.

Are you asking because you really want an answer?

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just...

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness...

The darkness behind my closed eyelids was like the cloud-covered sky, but the gray was somewhat deeper. Every few minutes, someone would come and paint over the gray with a different-textured gray – one with...

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living breathing novel. A story is...

That sounds good. But I don’t like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free-to go to where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I...

La vida es esencialmente injusta. De eso no cabe la menor duda. Pero creo que incluso de las situaciones injustas es posible extraer lo que de “justicia” haya en ellas. Puede que ello cueste tiempo...

Once you’re lost, you panic. You’re in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, ‘cause when you get in the mood...

Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are...

But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a...

A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.

Being tough isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it, though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried to understand those who were weak. I...

As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about the Air Chrysalis is that it’s not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writer’s sense of ‘I want...

If there’s any guy crazy enough to attack me, I’m going to show him the end of the world — close up. I’m going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes....

Like boarding a train running parallel. That’s what disappearing is.

When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn’t it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple...

His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias was an important element of truth.

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she’s gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never,...

Quello che voglio dire è che una condizione del genere dopo un po’ diventa cronica. La ferita è riassorbita nella quotidianità e non ci si ricorda più dov’è. Ma rimane. Non è una cosa che...

Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I’d be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere...

For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a “Reserved” sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact...

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on...

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that’s it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I’d loved...

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.

In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,'” she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn’t surprise me if she wrote it down. “So what does that really mean? In...

Lo que quiero decir es que el dolor se vuelve crónico. Engullido por la vida diaria, uno deja de saber cuáles son las heridas. Pero están ahí. Así son las heridas: no se pueden coger...

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing?Who...

You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at...

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like a fun friend you can’t really trust....

When I look back at myself at age twenty, what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up...