In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical

I'm not human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.

And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.

Our responsibility begins with our imagination.