Crying is personal. On the other hand, laughing is more general . Laughing makes our hearts wider.

No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with.

Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

I’m not good at talking,” Naoko said. “Haven’t been for the longest while. I start to say something and the wrong words come out. Wrong or sometimes completely backward. I try to go back and correct it, but things get even more complicated and confused, so that I don’t even remember what I started to say in the first place. Like I was split into two or something, one half chasing the other. And there’s this big pillar in the middle and they go chasing each other around and around it. The other me always latches onto the right word and this me absolutely never catches up

Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.