• "So Mr. Nakata, what do you think about the way the world's going?" he asked.

"I'm very sorry but I'm not bright, so I have no idea at all about that," Nakata said. "Having your own opinion and not being very bright are two different things." "But Mr. Hagita, not being very bright means you can't think about things." "But you did say you like eel."

• "A patriarchic male," Oshima again repeats.

The short one ignores this and goes on. "You're employing the status quo and the cheap phallocentric logic that supports it to reduce the entire female gender to second-class citizens, to limit and deprive women of the rights they're due. You're doing this unconsciously rather than deliberately, but that makes you even guiltier. You protect vested male interests and become insured to the pain of others, and don't even try to see what evil your blindness causes women and society. I realize that problems with restrooms and card catalogs are mere details, but if we don't begin with small things we'll never be able to throw off the cloak of blindness that covers our society. Those are the principles by which we act."

• "My body is physically female, but my mind's completely male," Oshima goes on. "Emotionally I live as a man. So I suppose your notion of being a historical example may be correct. And maybe I am sexist-who knows. But I'm not a lesbian, even though I dress this way. My sexual preference is for men. In other words I'm a female, but I'm gay. I do anal sex, and have never used my vagina for sex. My clitoris is sensitive but my breasts aren't. I don't have a period. So, what am I discriminating against? Could someone tell me?"
• "But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart."
• But the calm won't last long, you know. It's like beats that never tire, tracking you everywhere you go. They come out at you deep in the forest. They're tough, relentless, merciless, untiring, and they never give up. You might control yourself now, and not masturbate, but they'll get you in the end, as a wet dream. You might dream about raping your sister, your mother. It's not something you can control. It's a power beyond you-and all you can do is accept it."

You're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination. But you can't suppress dreams.

• "Listen-I'm not killing cats just for the fun of it. I'm not so disturbed I find it amusing," he went on. "I'm not just some dilettante with time on his hands. It takes a lot of time and effort to gather and kill this many cats. I'm killing them to collect their souls, which I use to create a special kind of flute."
• "You've got to look at it this way: this is war. You're a soldier, and you have to make a decision. Either I kill the cats, or you kill me. One or the other. You need to make a choice right here and now. This might seem an outrageous choice, but consider this: Most choices we make in life are equally outrageous."
• "He placed the gory lump on his palm and held it out for Nakata to see.

"Take a peek. It's still beating."

• "The Governor is a dog?" Nakata remembered the huge black dog who took him to Johnnie Walker's house, and that ominous figure and the Governor overlapped his mind.

"The world's swarming with those kind of dogs. Pawns of the capitalists." "Pawns?" "Like paws, with an 'n'." "Are there any capitalist cats?" Nakata asked.

• "Connections change too. Who's the capitalist, who's the proletarian. Who's on the right, who's on the left. The information revolution, stock options, floating assets, occupational restructuring, multinational corporations-what's good, what's bad. Boundaries between things are disappearing all the time. Maybe that's why you can't speak to cats anymore."

"The difference between right and left Nakata understands. This is right, and this is left. Correct?"

• “Sex can be a real pain that way, course when you’re in the mood all you can think about is what’s right under your nose — that’s sex alright.”
• "The book didn't come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn't have one. For me though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine."