“Are the rules more important to you than friendship?”“ ‘Friendship’ is a strong word. I’d prefer ‘good relationship between colleagues.’ ”She proffered this expression with ingenuous, affable calm.”

“It’s true that someone will always say that good and evil don’t exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it’s because their chemical structures are different.Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn’t seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen.”

“Les chiffres, dont j'avais toujours admiré la calme beauté pythagoricienne, devinrent mes ennemis. La calculette aussi me voulait du mal.”

“I don’t understand. She’s always been so friendly toward me.”“Yes, so long as your work consisted of updating calendars and photocopying golf club bylaws.”“But there was no danger of my taking her place!”“She was never afraid of that.”“Then why denounce me? Why would it upset her if I went to work for you?”“Miss Mori struggled for years to get the job she has now. She probably found it unbearable for you to get that sort of promotion after being with the company only ten weeks.”“I can’t believe it. That’s just so … mean.”“All I can say is that she suffered greatly during the first few years she was here.”“So she wants me to suffer the same fate? It’s too pathetic. I must talk to her.”“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”“Of course. How else are we going to work things out if we don’t talk?”“You just talked to Mister Omochi. Does it strike you that things have been worked out?”

“I glanced at the contents of what I was photocopying. They were the rules of the golf club of which Mister Saito was a member. I started to laugh.The next minute I felt more like crying, thinking about all the innocent trees that my superior was wasting to chastise me. I imagined the forests of the Japan of my childhood—maples, cedars, and ginkgoes—felled for the sole purpose of punishing a creature as insignificant as myself. I remembered, again, that Fubuki’s family name meant “forest.”

“Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.”

“God isn't chocolate, he's the encounter between chocolate and the palate capable of appreciating it.”