“I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.”

“I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.”

“Well, Mr Katagiri, I have not been frogging all these years for nothing. I keep my eye on the important things in life.”

“What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have”

“It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.”

“Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?”

“Now, though, that meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to me. [...] And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it. No one. Naoko is not there, and neither am I. Where could we have disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then - Naoko, and the self I was then and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It's true, I can't even bring back her face - not straight away, at least. All I'm left holding is a background, pure scenery, with no people at the front.”