Although I didn't think so at the time, things were a lot simpler in 1969. All you had to do to express yourself was throw rocks at riot police. But with today's sophistication, who's in a position to throw rocks? Who's going to brave what tear gas? C'mon, that's the way it is. Everything is rigged, tied into that massive capital web, and beyond this web there's another web. Nobody's going anywhere. You throw a rock and it'll come right back at you.

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

Whoa!" he says with a smile. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. "Chicken salad a la George Orwell!

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.