You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.

So once you're dead there's just nothing? Mari: Basically... Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.

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

Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it.