It is cognition that is the fantasy…. Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of...

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one...

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s...

We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we...

The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let’s leave doubt for tomorrow,” Komatsu said. “That is the point.

Are there any capitalist cats?” Nakata asked

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved...

A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born but you can choose how you die.

I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn’t keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn’t work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis...

At some point paradise would be lost.

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly...

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.

We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something – with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.

Listen up – there’s no war that will end all wars.

Dreams are the kind of things you can borrow and lend out.

Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we...

O coração humano é como um pássaro nocturno. Espera por qualquer coisa em silêncio e, quando chega a altura, levanta voo e vai direito a ela.

It was as if – this something I thought of only later, of course – she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person’s heart, a very sensual feeling.

Think it over carefully. This is very important,” I say, “because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the...

piensa que el hecho de que no existan luchas, odio ni deseos significa que tampoco existen las cosas opuestas. Es decir, la alegría, la paz de espíritu, el amor. Porque es de la desesperanza, del...

The third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly moving through time...

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some...

you mean machines are like humans?”I shook my head. “No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn’t go any further. With humans it’s different. The feeling is always changing....

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.

Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.

Ok I’m not so smart I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running and it’s the working class that get exploited. What kind revolution is it that just throws out...

You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you...

Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love with him, but she never made demands.’I don’t deserve a girl like Hatsumi,’...

Grandfather always said school’s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.

Don’t you get tired of always playing it cool?”The moon did not answer.

When you sneak into somebody’s backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts...

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

It’s a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to...

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one...

Leía mucho, lo que no quiere decir que leyera muchos libros. Más bien prefería releer las obras que me habían gustado. (…) Así pues, no tenía este punto en común con los demás, y leía...

There’s no sense forcing yourself if you don’t feel like it. Tell you the truth, I’ve had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared...

But you knoe, she’s right. Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it’s utterly precious.

A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it’s heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of...

You know, Junpei, everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does.

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.

Las diferencias generan pequeños roces cotidianos, y, a veces, la combinación de varios de esos roces se transforman en un gran malentendido. Como consecuencia de ello, se reciben a veces críticas infundadas. Y es evidente...

A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.

Liest man, was alle anderen auch lesen, kann man auch nur das denken, was alle anderen denken.

Sorel’s basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by...

Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can’t always be in the fast lane.

From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos...

They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.