A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself

Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.

I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.

And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage

I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.