Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it.

What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that,in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.

It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.

I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times." Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character.