• "Not that running away's going to solve everything. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything."
• Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverised bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. // And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. / And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
• A dark, omnipresent pool of water. / It was probably always there, hidden away somewhere. But when the time comes it silently rushes out, chilling every cell in your body. You drown in that cruel flood, gasping for breath. You cling to a vent near the ceiling, struggling, but the air you manage to breathe is dry and burns your throat. Water and thirst, cold and heat -- these supposedly opposite elements combine to assault you. / The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in -- and it doesn't have to be very big -- is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what do you get? Silence. You look for silence, but guess what? All you hear over and over is the voice of this omen. And sometimes this prophetic voice pushes a secret switch hidden deep inside your brain. / Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. [...]
• "'In travelling, a companion; in life, compassion',"
• It's all pointless -- assuming you try to find a point to it.
• I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it.
• "my point is: in this whole world the only person you can depend on is you."
• as individuals each of us is extremely isolated, while at the same time we are all linked by a prototypical memory. (?)
• I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of -- that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.
• People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.
• As if it was lying in wait for me, silence wraps itself around me tightly once I'm alone.
• It's just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.
  • quoting
• I've made my own rules, and by following them I won't get lost. At least, I hope not.
• When you're awake, you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.
• Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
• "You can't look too for ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble. [...]"
• "You have to look!" Johnnie Walker commanded. "That's another one of our rules. Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in, Mr Nakata. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still."
• When I get tired, I just space out and stare at the flames. I never grow tired of looking at them. They come in all shapes and colours, and move around like living things -- they're born, they connect up, part company and die.

[..]