The Great Passage

by Shion Miura

What if the interior of a room mirrors the interior of its inhabitant?

That would make him someone who stored up words but couldn’t put them to use, a dry-as-dust bore.

“That’s all you need to do. Rely on people and let them rely on you.

words were gathered, however they were interpreted and defined, no dictionary was ever truly complete. The moment you thought you had captured words in a volume, they became a wriggling mass impossible to catch hold of, slipping by you, changing their shape as if to laugh off the compilers’ exhaustion and passion, and issuing a challenge: “Try again! Catch us if you can!”

All Majime could do with a word’s endless motion and vast energy was capture it as it was, in one fleeting moment, and convey that state in written form.

Feel the same way about law

However much food you ate, as long as you were alive, you would experience hunger again, and words, however you managed to capture them, would disperse again like phantoms into the void.

Despite the loneliness, he liked its quiet, persistent energy.

Ferris Wheel

“Have more confidence. Anyone who’s as serious and diligent as you are is bound to succeed in whatever he does.”

“We talked it over and decided one reason we get on so well is we both have something we don’t want anyone interfering with.”

If you got too attached to the work, you could never bring yourself to let it go and finally make it public.

“What lies deep inside the heart can be a mystery even to oneself.”

The more you took a project to heart, the more your expectations of others on the team were bound to rise. The same way that if you loved someone, you wanted them to love you back.

Expectations and demands that weigh too heavy are poison. You’ll be worn down in the end, when you don’t get what you’re looking for. You’ll wind up exhausted, resigned, and alone, unable to trust anyone.

the mysterious power of writing, of words.

Gathering a huge number of words together with as much accuracy as possible was like finding a mirror without distortion. The less distortion in the word-mirror, the greater chance that when you opened up to someone and revealed your inner self, your feelings and thoughts would be reflected there with clarity and depth.

memories are words. A fragrance or a flavor or a sound can summon up an old memory, but what’s really happening is that a memory that had been slumbering and nebulous becomes accessible in words.”

Words gave things form so they could rise out of the dark sea.

“Words and the human heart that creates them are absolutely free, with no connection to the powers that be. And that’s as it should be. A ship to enable all people to travel freely across the sea of words—we must continue our efforts to make sure The Great Passage is just that.”