Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.

It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.

While they're still alive, people can become ghosts.

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.

She's always polite and kind, but her words lack the kind of curiosity and excitement you'd normally expect. Her true feelings- assuming such things exist- remain hidden away. Except for when a practical sort of decision has to be made, she never gives her personal opinion about anything. She seldom talks about herself, instead letting others talk, nodding warmly as she listens. But most people start to feel vaguely uneasy when talking with her, as if they suspect they're wasting her time, trampling on her private, graceful, dignified world. And that impression is, for the most part, correct.

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.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.