“Ms Soga," he begins, "when they called the register in school your name would have come before Ms Tanaka, and after Ms Sekine. Did you file a complaint abotu that? Did you object, askign them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revoliution just because it follows 67?”

“Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?”

“There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order.”

“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far outyou can’t follow them all the way to the end.”

“When a vacuum forms, someting has to come along to fill it. Because that's what everybody does.”

“Think it over carefully. This is very important," I say, "because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.”

“Listen--God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.~pages 286-287”