"I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind."

"Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause."

"Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep."

"In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene."

"Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language."

"I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I'd be left all alone."

"It's not me but the world that's deranged."

"I don't think it's right that I'm part of the problem. I can't be part of the solution if I'm part of the problem."

"In dreams begins responsiblities."

"Luka fisik memang diperlukan saat mempelajari sesuatu yang penting dalam hidup."

"Rock and roll was my favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shinamoto's brand of classical music. This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I loved it because she was a part of that world."

"Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own - with whatever guts you can muster."

"The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell."

"I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a damn thing, and then they bitch."

"I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life."

"You're here, I continued. "At least you look as if you're here. But maybe you aren't. Maybe it's just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you've hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys."

"Telling lies is a really terrible thing. These days, lies and silence are the two greatest sins in human society you might say. In reality, we tell lots of lies, and we often break into silence. However, if we were constant;y talking year-round, and telling only the truth truth would probably lose some of its value."

"She tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. 'Words turn into stone,' Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner's 'I'll Remember April.' Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come."

"People's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."

"Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries."

"In everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."

"There are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone."

"Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses."

"I've never once thought about how I was going to die, she said. "I can't think about it. I don't even know how I'm going to live."

"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."

"No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here."

"Once your get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own. And when your hopes are dashed you get dissapointed, and dissapointment leads to a feeling of helplessness. You get careless and let your guard down. And right now, she though, that si the last thing I can afford."

"He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn't able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone."

"Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind to yourself."

"If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it."

"Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow?"

"For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting."

"Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea?"

"Tendencies. Yougottendencies. Soevenifyoudideverythingoveragain, yourwholelife, yougottendenciestodojustwhatyoudid, alloveragain. -The Sheep Man."

"Passion can't sustain itselfforever."

"Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?"

"The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box."

"What happens when people open their hearts?""They get better."

"The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met.""You've met God?""Certainly. I telephone Him every night."

"When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person that walked in. That's what the storm is all about."

"Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?"

"The darkness behind my closed eyelids was like the cloud-covered sky, but the gray was somewhat deeper. Every few minutes, someone would come and paint over the gray with a different-textured gray - one with a touch of gold or green or red. I was impressed with the variety of grays that existed. Human beings were so strange. All you had to do was sit still for ten minutes, and you could see this amazing variety of grays."

"I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match."

"Okay, let's put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it's alright if I don't sleep with you. What I'm saying is I'd like to be as fair as possible. I don't want to force anything on anybody, any more than I'd want anything forced on me. It's enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me."

"Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there."

"April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had not choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind."

"Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free."

"Memory works in different ways for everybody. Different capacities, different directions, too. Sometimes memory helps you think, sometimes it impedes. Doesn't mean it's good or bad. Probably means it's no big deal."

"All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?"

"Not being able to find the right words at crucial times is one of my many problems."