One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

You've already decided what you're going to do, and all that's left is to set the wheels in motion. I mean, it's your life. Basically, you gotta go with what you think is right.

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.

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

No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.