Thanks so much for seeing, the first time you met us, that even though we’re like ghosts, the two of us, even though we’re not supposed to exist, we are alive.

The lake has all sorts of different faces. And so it’s always fresh.

Perhaps it’s because she spends all her time sleeping – she comes and goes just as she pleases in the world of her dreams, she’s free to go anywhere she wants. And that gives her access to much more information than people have who are up all the time.

Things that don’t matter at all to one person can hurt another so deeply it seems as bad as dying.

Akira often gets mad at me because he thinks I’m too nice to strangers, and cold as a fish at home. What can I do? He’s right, but that’s the way I am. I’m more enthusiastic about people I’ve just met, whom I barely know at all, than with old friends. Before the awkwardness of a new acquaintance has worn off, I’m ready to offer myself up to that person.

For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they’ve emerged. You don’t even notice that you’ve been inside until it’s too late for you ever to go back – that’s how perfect the temperature of that blanket is.

From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a glomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.

He was quiet in the way people are when they believe the world would get along just fine without them.

I got up and sprinted into the ocean, chasing my father. I’m in love with the moment when the water switches from being so cold you want to leap up into the air to something that feels just right against your skin.

Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.