What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

I spent several days arranging and rearranging a variety of facts and words and memories, until I had to give up thinking. Speculation was getting me nowhere.

Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.”

though, the darkness never ceased to be darkness.

may be tough, but sometimes you’ve got to just stop and take time.

May Kasahara, Malta Kano, Creta Kano, the telephone woman, and Kumiko. May Kasahara was right: I had just a few too many women around me these days. And each one came packaged with her own special, inscrutable problem. But I was too tired to think. I had to get some sleep. And there was something I would have to do when I woke up. I went back to

light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment—perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one’s life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything.

She seemed to be mulling this over at her end. “You must be very worried,” she said. “There is nothing I can say at this point, but things should begin to come clear before too long. Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of the tides. No one can do anything to change

a person’s destiny is something you look back at after it’s past, not something you see in advance.