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

Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.

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.

That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution

I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.