This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.

It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished.

I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone-not anyone-try to put them into that crazy box- not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt—it never comes off.