“To a hikikomori, winter is painful because everything feels cold, frozen over, and lonely. To a hikikomori, spring is also painful because everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable. Summer, of course, is especially painful...”

“But now we've finally taken full possession of what is rightfully ours, because everyone must feel their own pain--and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful.”

“Everyone had an ulterior motive in his worldview. Everyone was self-serving and therefore a potential instrument of pain. The world was a lonely, awful, brutal, terrible place.”

“Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.The pain is an anchor, mooring me here.”

“Kazuko was worried about him, calling him a hikikomori, a self-imposed shut-in.”

“Fear hadn’t come to him yet. Pain hadn’t come where pain would come. There was only the feeling of having done something perfect at last—the taste of a drink from a cold, pure spring.”