The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things.

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.

Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.

The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.

Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you