You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

There's no war that will end all wars.

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I'd close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people's voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I'd probably never know.

Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.