“What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.”

“The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.”

“Hajime," she began, "the sad truth is that some things can't go backwards. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back to the way they were. If one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.”

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”

“There in the dim light, staring at the shadow on the wall, I poured out the story of my life. (…) How nothing touched me. And I touched nothing. How I’d lost track of what mattered. How I worked like a fool for things that didn’t. How it didn’t make a difference either way.”

“Everyone of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories.”

“Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching truth, I sensed, however vaguely. But death was a fact, a serious fact, no matter how you looked at it. Stuck inside this suffocating contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles. Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.”