If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.

Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn’t a place for me.

I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.

I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural.

When I write a novel I put into play all the information inside me. It might be Japanese information or it might be Western; I don't draw a distinction between the two.

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.