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It stood out alone, like the steeple of a town visited by a flood, thrusting up above the muddy water.
The world was a mushy bowl of loose gruel, lacking framework or handholds.
He felt no terror, but he could not keep his eyes open. His eyelids were clamped shut.
It’s a thrill to look at the clear night sky and discover a new star before anybody else sees it.
times Komatsu’s eyes would take on a sharp glow, like stars glittering in the winter night sky.
If she were ever reincarnated, let her not be reborn as such a miserable rubber plant!
These dates were engraved in her mind, but as soon as she recalled them, they lost all meaning. She saw white cards imprinted with dates scattering in the wind, flying in all directions. She ran, trying to pick up as many as she could, but the wind was too strong, the sheer number of cards overwhelming.
With unwavering conviction and ruthlessness.
He crossed the threshold separating life from death without being aware of it himself.
He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar, but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.
But his promise had not sunk deep roots in his brain. One rainfall was all it took to wash them out. Tengo
When he tried to think, reality hovered nearby, then retreated into the distance.
They had made up for the gaps and inconsistencies in the social system. It seemed like an enjoyable time to be alive.
Her most attractive facial feature was her deep, striking eyes. Under the gaze of two glistening, pitch-black pupils, Tengo felt uncomfortable.
Her style of speaking had some distinguishing characteristics: sentences shorn of embellishment, a chronic shortage of inflection, a limited vocabulary (or at least what seemed like a limited vocabulary).
as if toward the center of a great whirlpool.
It was a lovely gesture, and her fingers were lovely, each seemingly moving according to its own will and purpose as if in tune with something occult.
Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
The mere sight of her sent a violent shudder through him.
A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him.
the hunger was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
“Just like you and me,” Tengo repeated. “You
Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people.
But risk is the spice of life.
The idea was to calm the nerves by introducing a moderate amount of alcohol into the body.
Ideas were welling up inside him like life-forms stirring in a primordial sea.
He excised any hint of ego, shook off all extraneous embellishments, and sent all transparent signs of imposed logic into the back room.
He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always the rules of the game.
The trench walls were crumbling here and there. The machine guns’ ammunition was running out. The barbed wire barriers had noticeable thin spots.
The slightest difference in nuance could bring the passage to life or kill it.
The long hours of mental concentration had left him physically spent but emotionally uplifted.
Tengo could not tell whether she lacked expression because she had no feelings or the feelings she had were unconnected to her expression.
“Kids get shut out just for being different from everyone else. The same kind of thing goes on in the grown-up world, but it’s much more direct in the children’s world.”
And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words.
“everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority.
If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”
“Yes,” he said, adding meat to the bones of her bare pronouncement.
His question hadn’t landed in any region of her consciousness.
It seemed to have gone beyond the bounds of meaning, sucked into permanent nothingness like a lone planetary exploration rocket that has sailed beyond Pluto.
Unfortunately, though, body language generally fails to have its intended effect on the phone.
swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.
The tall trees gave the quarter a gloomy feel, and time seemed to slow when you stepped inside.
Only in the summer would the atmosphere change dramatically, when the cries of cicadas pained the ears.
Looking deep into his eyes – if, that is, he allowed you to do so – you could find a warm glow.
Among them were plants that, to Aomame, could only be weeds.
but the lack of affectation in this hothouse was something she rather liked.
On a personal level, she was simply a bright, friendly woman who knew no fear, trusted her instincts, and stuck to her decisions.
None of her movements made any sound. She was like a female fox cutting through the forest.
These were eyes that had witnessed much. Aomame returned her gaze as long as courtesy allowed.
She always spoke softly. Her voice was easily drowned out by a slight gust of wind.
