“We used to spend hours talking. We never got tired of talking, never raun out of topics - novels, the world, scenery, language. Our conversations were more open and intimate than ane lovers'.”

“So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.”

“All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable,Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept metethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories,my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d neverseen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair ofyoung lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and Ihad exposed our hearts to one another, an experience I’d neverhave with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we hadtogether, though we never put into words how very precious itwas.Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in aphysical way. We would have been far happier if we had. Butthat was like the tides, the change of seasons—somethingimmutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. Nomatter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendshipwasn’t going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a deadend. That was painfully clear.I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her morethan anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve thosefeelings, for there was nothing to take their place.I dreamed that someday there’d be a sudden, majortransformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, Icould dream about it, couldn’t I? But I knew it would nevercome true.”

“Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.”

“If people lived forever—if they never got any older—if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy—do you think they’d bother to think hard about things, the way were doing now? I mean, we think about its everything, more or less—philosophy, psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death, the complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world.”

“It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.”

“If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.”