“Hoshino found Oshima an appealing young man. Intelligent, well groomed, obviously from a good family. And quite kind. He's got to be gay, right? Not that Hoshino cared. To each his own, was his thinking. Some men talk with stones, and some men sleep with other men.”

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.” Hoshino looked up, mouth half open, and gazed at her face. “What’s that?” “Henri Bergson,” she replied, licking the semen from the tip of his penis. [...] “I can’t think of anything special, but could you quote some more of that philosophy stuff? I don’t know why, but it might keep me from coming so quick. Otherwise I’ll lose it pretty fast.”

“You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.”

“At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.”

“My husband and I see each other only on weekends, and generally get along well. We're like good friends, life partners able to spend some pleasant time together. We talk about all sorts of things, and we trust each other implicitly. Where and how he has a sex life I don't know,and I don't really care. We never make love, though -- never even touch each other. I feel bad about it, but I don't want to touch him. I just don't want to.”

“I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times." Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character.”

“Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.”