"You'll die with me?" Midori asked with shining eyes. "Hell, no," I said. "I'll run if it gets dangerous. If you want …"

"True, given time enough, I can remember her face. I start joining images - her tiny, cold hand; her straight, black h…"

"Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table - and we go on living and breathing …"

"Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my de…"

"I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I …"

"Only the dead stay seventeen forever."

"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book th…"

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

"[...] even if we hadn't met that day, my life might not have been any different. We had met that day because we were …"

"I'm confused. Really confused. And it's a lot deeper than you think."