The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You're born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you're both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities?...One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin.

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler.

What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

After all this, I won't start to hate you.

When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.