“You go into the dark to get away from what you know, and if you go far enough, you realize, suddenly, that you'll never really make it back into the light.”

“But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.”

“Time will make it worse! You're...the other half of his soul. He's never going to get over you. And no matter how much you hope that you will... you'll never get over him. You're going to wake up one day and realize what you've done, and you're going to regret the time you wasted apart from him for the rest of your life.”

“Suddenly, I can see you weren’t bragging – once you go alien, you really do never go back.”

“How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for?Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it's almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.And God knows he was lucky, so many ways, and God knows he was thankful. Everything was good and better than he could have hoped for, better than he ever deserved; only, whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn't what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.”

“Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you loose, you'll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.-Oibore (Enishi's dad) to Yahiko and Misao”