It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.

You said you're going far away," Tamaru said. "How far away are we talking about?" "It's a distance that can't be measured." "Like the distance that separates one person's heart from another's.

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much ... But when I write, I write weird. That's very strange. When I'm getting more and more serious, I'm getting more and more weird.

Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.