Now that you are dead, you are splendid. Photographs of people who have just died are worth twenty percent more, and for suicides there is an additional five percent. Now that you are dead you are much in demand.

When I was young, I could bounce back from things like a brand-new rubber ball.

The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.

Perhaps the act of writing is necessary when nothing happens.

Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current.

Things have value Because somebody buys them, Because somebody pays money; If you can find a buyer, Even a lie is worth a thousand yen.

When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet... When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world.