It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down.

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.

We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.

When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood.

Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.

Then I noticed that my shadow was crying too, shedding clear, sharp shadow tears. Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? They’re nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts. Or maybe not. It struck me then that the tears my shadow was shedding might be the real thing, and the tears that I was shedding were just shadows. You don’t get it, I’m sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked seventeen-year-old girl is shedding tears in the moonlight, anything can happen. It’s true.