The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.

At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.

Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

But the silence spoke volumes.