I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don't want to do ANYTHING. Make sure you keep away from me then.' I'd like to, but how can I tell?' I asked. O.K., I'll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red one. That should work,' she said with a laugh. 'If you see me on the street and I'm wearing a red hat, don't talk to me, just run away.

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us.

I'm not so weird to me.

When I write a novel I put into play all the information inside me. It might be Japanese information or it might be Western; I don't draw a distinction between the two.