“We're all struggling so hard, heading in the wrong direction. All our efforts are in vain, Kazumi. They come to nothing! Our pleasure, our sorrow, our anger—it all comes and goes like a typhoon or a squall or cherry blossoms. We are all being pushed by our petty feelings and carried away to the same place. None of us can resist it. Do whatever you think is idealistic? But it's not! It's just petty! We only end up knowing that our efforts were in vain!”

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”

“Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our chicdren, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.”

“If we're all led to believe that poverty is just a matter of laziness or stupidity or whatever other justifications we can come up with, then we're not likely to be in a real position to do much about it when it comes to attacking the root cause of the problem. Instead of demanding a more equitable system for the distribution of social and economic goods, we blame the victim. This is insidious, because ideology is something we carry around with us in our heads; it forms the basis of our day-to-day understanding of the world.”

“What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shakes us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.”

“We all like to think the world ends when we do. The truth is our acquaintances, our friends, and our loved ones all live on, and through them, so do we. It's not about what you had, but what you gave. It's not about how you looked, but how you lived. And it's not just about being remembered. It's about giving people a good reason to remember you.”