Our responsibility begins with our imagination.

But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule.

This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn’t a place for me.

Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples, some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload.