All the Lovers in the Night

by Mieko Kawakami

“People act like feminism is a dirty word. As if being a strong, hard-working woman has fallen out of fashion. Not that these people have ever thought about any of that before. They say it’s different for me. That not everyone is as strong as I am, that most people are weak or whatever. But that’s not it. They aren’t weak. They’re dull. They don’t pick up on things. And I’m not strong. I’m honest. Anyway, who cares what’s fashionable? How can anybody go through life thinking about crap like that? This is just my personality—it’s who I am.”

“The first thing they teach you as a proofreader is that you’re not supposed to read the story on the page. That goes for a novel or any other kind of book. No reading allowed.” “You’re not supposed to read?” “Right. As a proofreader, no matter what you’re working on, you’re not allowed to get lost in the text.” Mitsutsuka nodded. “. . . The goal is to read as little as possible . . . Of course, we’re proofreading, so we have to engage with every aspect of the story. Plot, continuity, chronology, everything. Anyway, the idea is to keep our emotions out of it . . . to focus our energy on finding all the errors hiding in the book.”

“Memory’s funny, isn’t it? We remember some things out of nowhere, but so much of what happens, we never think about again.”

“Books are so full of mistakes, it almost makes me wonder if they only exist so that the mistakes can pass their genes on to another generation.” “No kidding,” he said. “Of course, there comes a point when you have to stop looking. You have to let go, but the mistakes are still there, always.”

As long as you’re living on this planet, you have to be serious about something, but it’s better to be serious about a limited number of things.”

Are you on Twitter? Everybody writes the most mindless, meaningless stuff on there.