“So you want another story?"Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened."Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?"Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English."Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?”

“I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.The probability of seperate worlds meeting is very small. The lure is immense. We send starships. We fall in love”

“I recognized the words "domestic violence" because the Japanese use the same words, only with blockier pronunciation. " Domesuchikku baiorensu". I think it's weird they use the same word; I'm pretty sure they invented domestic violence independently of us English-speakers, at the same time we were inventing it independently of them.”

“Invention leads to discovery.clothing is something that we invented so that in span of time we could discover it was of no use.”

“Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is.”

“Invention:I always wanted to invent something that would move around & make funny noises & would change the world as we know it & I forgot all about that until we had kids & now I see I came pretty close.”