But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself

It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take.” (p. 318).

I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free.

[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.