But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blad...
Where and how did my relationship with Kumiko go wrong? That's what I can't understand. Not that I'm saying everything was perfect until that point. A man and a woman in their twenties, with two distinct personalities, just happen to meet somewhere a...
The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive al...
Stop agreeing with everything I say! It's not as if you're going to solve everything by admitting your mistakes. Whether or not you admit then or not, mistakes are mistakes." "It's true," I said. It -was- true.
Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.
Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room must have been cold, but I didn’t feel cold. There was some kind of special something in t...
They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn't the other way around—the thing gets more and more like its name.
When pain comes to me, I leave my physical self. It's just like quietly slipping into the next room when someone you don't want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I recognize that the pain has come to my body; I feel the existence of th...
It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it -- that they couldn't do it even if they tried -- I told myself, 'I'm different from other people,...
As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I th...
Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall.
Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking a...
I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at ...
Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.
I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.
I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept.
If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.
And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love.
