I always felt as if I'd been handed a cardboard box crammed full of monkeys. I'd take the monkeys out of the box one at a time, carefully brush off the dust, give them a pat on the bottom, and send them scurrying off into the fields. I never knew where they went from there.

I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it,' Tengo said...'It was the one thing he was best at.' 'Hmm. I see,' Kumi said. She pondered this. 'But that might very well be the best way to live your life.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

To wit, existence is communication and communication is existence.

I'm going to live to be twenty-five,' she said, 'then die.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. 'Are memories such an important thing?'It depends,' she replies, and closes her eyes. 'In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.