“She'd permed her hair to within an inch of its life. When she moved her head, the mass of hair followed along behind her a split second later."Perhaps you had to live through the late 70's, early 80's to appreciate this.”

“She'd permed her hair to within an inch of its life. When she moved her head, the mass of hair followed along behind her a split second later."Perhaps you had to live through the late 70's, early 80's to appreciate this.”

“It's sad but it^s true how society says her life is alredy over. There's nothing to do and there's nothing to say..”

“She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.”

“She spent the foggy day in endless, aimless walking, for it seemed to her that if she moved quickly enough she would escape the fear that hunted her. It was a vague and shadowy fear of something cruel and stupid that had caught her and would never let her go. She had always known that it was there - hidden under the more of less pleasant surface of things. Always. Ever since she was a child.You could argue about hunger or cold or loneliness, but with that fear you couldn't argue. It went too deep. You were too mysteriously sure of its terror. You could only walk very fast and try to leave it behind you.”

“on him, under him, with his mouth pressed to hers, he sang to her uncouth songs that moved through her body.”

“Yukiko rolled over.That plain, that simple.Her body was small in its moving.And her hair followed, dreaming her as she moved.A cat, her cat, in bed with her was awakened by her moving, and watched her turn slowly over in bed. When she stopped moving, the cat went back to sleep.It was a black cat and could have been a suburb of her hair.”