No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I...
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...
It's just that the chaos has changed shape. The giraffe and the bear have traded hats, and the bear's switched scarves with the zebra.
And you came to Finland to build a station?""No I came here on vacation to visit a friend.""That's good," the driver said. "Vacations and friends are the two best things in life.
Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that --by following language and a logic that appears...
We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when d...
So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
No truth can cure the sadness 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 that sadness through to the end andlearn som...
Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.
I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?
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.
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.
Nights without work I spent with whisky and books.
It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.
Here's what hurst the most, Kafuku said. I didn't truly understand her--or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she's dead and gone. Like a small, locked safe lying...
As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existe...
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? Because each of us is an egg, a unique sou...
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very v...
What's really important here, I whispered loudly to myself,is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have
We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear.