“True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men.”

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

“A person never knows their own true face. Everybody thinks that the phoney, posed social mask they wear is their real face.”

“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.”

“Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his next appearance on-stage. Not one of them has ever broken free of his familial ties with me and disappeared for ever - at least, not within the confines of my heart.”

“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.”