Swallows Quotes

“In this society, you could command respect as long as you were someone's wife, no matter how dull your husband was. The world would always defer to a woman who was the property of a man. Though, of course, the respect was ultimately directed toward the husband more than the wife.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“Even after moving to Tokyo, she still couldn't hold down a job. Sometimes she wondered whether she was the problem, whether she was just too impatient. But eventually she realized what made these jobs so intolerable to her: it was the sense that her fate was already decided, that there was nowhere else to go — while, in reality, she still had no idea who she was, or what she wanted to do with her life.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“It made Riki furious that men were allowed to buy women yet ridiculed them when they chose to sell themselves.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“But here was Daiki, saying he wouldn't do what she didn't want do. Of course, this was because Riki was paying him - it was a business transaction. But it would be unimaginable for a woman selling her body to say the same to a male client. In fact, doing so might put her life in danger.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“She never knew that being poor could feel this lonely, this suffocating. Just once in her life, she wanted to experience what it felt like to not have to worry about money.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“honorarium”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows

“Her whole life, she'd been judged, told what kinds of jobs she could and couldn't do. All those people who said, Just try harder, all you need to succeed is the right attitude — they were a bunch of idiots. It didn't matter how much they lectured her about being self motivated, because she'd been assigned to the lesser group from the get-go. But most people didn't understand this even if she tried to explain.”
― Natsuo Kirino, Swallows