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.

Green makes me think of silence, or maybe it's loneliness. I get the feeling of a terribly distant star.

Time cannot be spurred on like a horse.

Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.

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.

Far happier he, who, young and full of pride And radiant with the glory of the sun, Leaves earth before his singing time is done. All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide, His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died.

A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.