“The important thing in this life is to link your sadness to the sadness of others.”

“I don't want to die in darkness any thicker than this. I want to bring some kind of resolution in my life.”

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”

“We'll shake, we'll shake the tree of dreams, That solitary tree of dreamsIn the centre of the verdant field.”

“But the scrawny, powerless man with his arms outstretched on the cross had at some point reclaimed Otsu. Still, that doesn't change the fact that I won. With startling rapacity God had merely picked up a man I discarded.”

“When you were still here, Isobe thought, death seemed so far removed from me. It was as though you stood with both arms outstretched, keeping death from me. But now that you're gone, suddenly it seems right here in front of me.”

“Desolation would not be the proper word to describe his feelings now; it was more the sense of emptiness he imagined he might feel standing all alone on the surface of the moon.”