I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.

It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.

Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.

What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.