“These guys are fakes. All they've got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so proud of, while sticking their hanse up their skirts. And when they graduate,they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who've never read Marx and have kids they give fancy names to that are enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial complex? Don't make me laugh!”

“So I'm not crazy after all! I thought it looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a first grader or a concentration camp survivor. What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.”

“It feels like ancient history," said Naoko. But anyhow, sorry about last night. I don't know, I was a bundle of nerves. I really shouldn't have done that after you came here all the way from Tokyo.""Never mind," I said. "Both of us have a lot of feelings we need to get out in the open. So if you want to take those feelings and smash somebody with them, smash me. Then we can understand each other better.""So if you understand me better, what then?""You don't get it, do you?" I said. "It's not a question of 'what then.' Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”

“Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’m working class. Revolution or not, the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure ashell isn’t just changing the name on city hall. But those guys don’t know that - those guys with their big words. Tell me, Watanabe, have you ever seen a taxman?”

“Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all.”

“What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand?”

“You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. Now I just have topolish these off, and everything'll be OK. Life is a box of chocolates. I suppose you could call it a philosophy.”