No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion

Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.