If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe #‎ running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.

My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.

I found a Bill Evans record in the bookcase and was listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the record I had played in Naoko's room on the night of her birthday, the night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had happened only six months earlier, but it felt like something from a much remoter past. Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often-too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.