I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.

I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.

An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.

It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.

A life without pain: it was the very thing I had dreamed of for years, but now that I had it, I couldn’t find a place for myself within it. A clear gap separated me from it, and this caused me great confusion. I felt as if I were not anchored to this world - this world that I had hated so passionately until then; this world that I had continued to revile for its unfairness and injustice; this world where at least I knew who I was. Now the world ceased to be the world, and I had ceased to be me.