if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it’d lose even its imperfection. (location 50-50 12/29/2023 5:50:13 PM)

“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.” (location 221-221 12/29/2023 6:13:08 PM)

I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I’m in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current’s too overpowering; I don’t have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I’ve never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there’s no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I’ll be burned up, gone forever. (location 346-346 12/29/2023 6:39:20 PM)

“A hundred percent sure,” Sumire said. “When I’m with her that bone in my ear starts ringing. Like delicate seashell wind chimes. And I want her to hold me, let everything take its course. If that isn’t sexual desire, what’s flowing in my veins must be tomato juice.” (location 726-726 12/30/2023 8:11:35 AM)

“Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I’m speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it’s something a single book can explain, it’s not worth having explained. What I mean is don’t leap to any conclusions.” (location 731-731 12/30/2023 8:12:47 AM)

After the soccer match I sank back into my chair, stared at the ceiling, and imagined Sumire in her village in France. By now she was already on that Greek island. Lying on the beach, gazing at the passing clouds. Either way, she was a long way away from me. Rome, Greece, Timbuktu, Aruanda—it didn’t matter. She was far far away. And most likely that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was a meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs. Sumire said she missed me. But she had Miu beside her. I had no one. All I had was—me. Same as always. (location 1044-1044 12/30/2023 11:32:33 AM)

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing. (location 1599-1599 12/30/2023 2:11:44 PM)

This woman loved Sumire. But couldn’t feel any sexual desire for her. Sumire loved this woman and desired her. I loved Sumire and felt sexual desire for her. Sumire liked me but didn’t love me, and didn’t feel any desire for me. I felt sexual desire for a woman who will remain anonymous. But I didn’t love her. (location 1670-1670 12/31/2023 9:46:33 AM)

You’re optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does. (location 1730-1730 12/31/2023 4:49:09 PM)

Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. (location 1802-1802 12/31/2023 6:17:41 PM)

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don’t know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion. (location 1803-1803 12/31/2023 6:18:08 PM)

In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. (location 1831-1831 12/31/2023 6:23:47 PM)

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah movie The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: “Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?” She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. “Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War. (location 1833-1833 12/31/2023 6:24:19 PM)

“Being tough isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it, though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried to understand those who were weak. I was too used to being fortunate, and didn’t try to understand those less fortunate. Too used to being healthy, and didn’t try to understand the pain of those who weren’t. Whenever I saw a person in trouble, somebody paralyzed by events, I decided it was entirely his fault—he just wasn’t trying hard enough. People who complained were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakable, and practical, but lacked any human warmth. And not a single person around me pointed this out. (location 2155-2155 12/31/2023 7:00:45 PM)

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? (location 2419-2419 12/31/2023 8:49:29 PM)

“I’m speaking as a teacher here,” I replied, “but especially with children, habitual shoplifting is not so much a criminal act as the result of a subtle emotional imbalance. Maybe if I’d paid a little more attention I would have noticed something. I fell down on the job, definitely. But with emotionally disturbed children there’s not always something outward to go on. If you separate the act from everything else and punish the child, the basic problem isn’t going to be cured. Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form. Often children are trying to send a message by shoplifting, so even if it isn’t the most efficient way of handling the problem, it’s important to take the time to talk things out.” (location 2546-2546 12/31/2023 9:56:23 PM)

I feel like I’ve been alone ever since I was a child. I had parents and an older sister at home, but I didn’t get along with them. I couldn’t communicate with anyone in my family. So I often imagined I was adopted. For some reason some distant relatives gave me up to my family. Or maybe they got me from an orphanage. Now I realize how silly that idea was. My parents aren’t the type to adopt a helpless orphan. Anyway, I couldn’t accept the fact that I was related by blood to these people. It was easier to think they were complete strangers. (location 2622-2622 12/31/2023 10:01:50 PM)

When something bothered me, I didn’t talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that’s just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own. (location 2636-2636 12/31/2023 10:02:55 PM)

“When I was younger all kinds of people talked to me,” she said. “Told me all sorts of things. Fascinating stories, beautiful, strange stories. But past a certain point nobody talked to me anymore. No one. Not my husband, my child, my friends . . . no one. Like there was nothing left in the world to talk about. Sometimes I feel like my body’s turning invisible, like you can see right through me.” (location 2707-2707 12/31/2023 10:07:36 PM)

And if push came to shove, he had the wherewithal (location 2749-2749 12/31/2023 10:11:09 PM)

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us—that’s snatched right out of our hands—even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness. (location 2791-2791 12/31/2023 10:15:37 PM)

I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and open the window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sure enough, a mold-colored half-moon hangs in the sky. Good. We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it toward me. I spread my fingers apart and stare at the palms of both hands, looking for bloodstains. There aren’t any. No scent of blood, no stiffness. The blood must have already, in its own silent way, seeped inside. (location 2838-2838 12/31/2023 10:28:11 PM)