Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

...I've just been feeling insecure since I was 20, and that's all I've been trying to express. Now the entire world is feeling insecure.

All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.

What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.