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.

No matter what you tell me, no matter how legitimate your reasons, I can never just forget about you, I can never push the years we spent together out of my mind. I can't do it because it really happened, they are part of my life, and there is no way I can just erase them. That would be the same as erasing my own self.

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.

Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.