At the End of the Matinee

by Keiichirō Hirano

A bud that you look at knowing nothing of the flower to come isn’t the same as the bud you look back on in memory with the flower before you.

“People think that only the future can be changed, but in fact, the future is continually changing the past. The past can and does change. It’s exquisitely sensitive and delicately balanced.”

From now on, people would forevermore be creatures of exhaustion, distinguished from other animals by their continual state of fatigue. Caught up in the tempo of machines and computers, their senses buffeted by constant noise, people griped about daily life with piteous intensity before entering the complete silence obtainable only by death.

He had felt the silence like the blade of a sword,

What was love if it failed to inspire the desire to be worthy of the one you cherished?

I suppose you could say their beauty makes the horror acceptable, brings it into focus. Few people can look at horror straight on, unadorned. If they do, they try to forget what they’ve seen, to expunge it from memory.

I’m good at self-analysis and utterly obtuse about other people.”

Loneliness, when it came down to it, was the awareness of your utter lack of influence in the world—knowing that you could and would have zero influence on either your contemporaries or on future generations.