Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.

I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.

Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?

As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.

At my core, there is nothing. Neither is it parched wastelands. At my core, there is love. I'll go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo forever --- his strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.