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Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
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Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
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You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?
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You don’t get it, do you?" I said. “It’s not a question of ‘what then’. Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
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Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
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Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.
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Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you.
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You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.
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I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death.
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One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.
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Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.
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You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.
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Ice contains no future , just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays.
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Can't trust people. Won't do any good. They'll kill you everytime. They'll kill eachother. They'll kill everyone.
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Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.
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The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves.
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It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.
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I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)
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But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule.
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A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over.
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"I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind."
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Shakespeare said it best,' Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen head. 'Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other.
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It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.
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The worst thoughts usually strike in the dead of the night.