The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.
Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.
No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with.
Nature is actually unnatural.
The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I’d never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.
Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.
One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It’s strange.
Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but lose you.
Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.
Everytime you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.
Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn’t seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.
To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.
You’re afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can suppress imagination but you can’t supress dreams.
And when you come back to Japan next summer, let’s have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we’ll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.
What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.
In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.
Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.
What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?
Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.