Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.

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.

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

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.

It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.

The strength I'm looking for isn't the type where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want us the kind of strength to be able to absorb that kind of power, to stand up to it.The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortunes, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.