“What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”

“You’re really cute, Midori,” I corrected myself.“What do you mean really cute?”“So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up.”

“The photographer from the magazine, Masao Kageyama, would ride along in the van that accompanied me. He’d take pictures as they drove along. It wasn’t a real race, and there weren’t any water stations, so I’d occasionally stop to get water from the van. The Greek summer is truly brutal, and I knew I’d have to be careful not to get dehydrated. “Mr. Murakami,” Mr. Kageyama said, surprised as he saw me getting ready to run, “you’re not really thinking of running the whole route, are you?”“Of course I am. That’s why I came here.”“Really? But when we do these kinds of projects most people don’t go all the way. We just take some photos, and most of them don’t finish the whole route. So you really are going to run theentire thing?”Sometimes the world baffles me. I can’t believe that people would really do things like that.”

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.”

“You always look so cool, like no matter what happens, it’s got nothing to do with you, but you’re not really like that. In your own way, you’re out there fighting as hard as you can, even if other people can’t tell by looking at you.”

“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”

“Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something. "Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. See you again sometime.”