I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You're born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you're both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities?...One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin.

You're afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination but you can't supress dreams.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.

I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.

She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.