"As the sun was setting, he would head out for a long walk, and once the sun was down he would read a book while listening to music."
"You transform the scenes you see into your own words and reconstruct them. And you confirm your own existence."
"What most surprised Aomame was the fact that people continued to dig coal out of the earth in an age when bases were being built on the moon."
"He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game."
"The air outside was chilling and fresh with the smell of trees and grass. This was the real world. Here time flowed in the normal manner. Aomame inhaled the real world's air deep into her lungs."
"It felt as if something had awakened a memory that had been asleep inside me for years. Something seemed to grab my shoulder and shake me."
"'Are you a feminist, of a lesbian?'"
"Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world."
"One aim of my field is to relativize the images possessed by individuals, discover in these images the factors universal of all human beings, and feed these universal truths back to those same individuals. As a result of this process, people might be able to belong to something even as they maintain their autonomy."
"After she had been sitting there for a considerable length of time, she felt all the liquids in her body pouring out of her."
"It was after this that Aomame came to feel an intense periodic craving for men's bodies."
"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim."
"But pure, unadulterated feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth - firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon. The money is for that."
"If, as the dowager said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn't our genetic purpose - to transmit DNA - be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?"
"Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman."
"The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don't want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can't turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories."
"It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes."
"Aside from the rubber plant, there was almost nothing left in the room that still had the smell life."
"He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken."
"As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from."
"Writing - and especially fiction writing - is well suited to my personality, I think. It's good to have something you want to do, and now I finally have it."
"Still, I have to keep soldiering on until I die, the only way I know how. Not a laudable sort of life, but the only life I know how to live."
"On the wall was a round clock. It was an old, dusty clock, but it told the time correctly. It's role, perhaps, was to be a witness of some kind."
"I will probably never see these bones again, he thought. All that is left will be memories, and eventually they, too, will vanish like dust."
"The boundary between herself and the world seemed blurred."
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