The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake.

Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.

In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.

There's no war that will end all wars.

It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little. I had not consciously intended to keep May Kasahara a secret from Kumiko. My relationship with her was not that big a deal: whether I mentioned it or not was of no consequence. Once it had flown down a certain delicate channel, however, it had become cloaked in the opacity of secretiveness, whatever my original intention had have been.