You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either.

I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

In Invisible there's a lot about childhood, the death of the brother and then the relationship between the brother and sister.

No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

At that point, Noriko finally breaks down and begins to cry sobbing into her hands as the floodgates open - this young woman who has suffered in silence for so long, this good woman who refuse to believe she's good, for only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves.