I just didn't want to be a loser anymore...-Mitsuko Souma
Koushun Takami, Battle Royale.
“Loving someone always requires you to not love others.”
“Shinji slowly fell forward onto his face. Debris bounced up on impact. It took less than thirty seconds for the rest of his body to die. The memento of his beloved uncle--the earring worn by the wo...”
“That was it. Shogo stopped breathing. The dim yellow light falling from the ceiling of the pilothouse shone on his pale face. He seemed at ease."Shogo!" Shuya yelled. He still had more to say. "You...”
“They tried to believe in their classmates. They must have believed that if we could all get together, then we might end up being saved. We should commend them for that. We couldn't do that.”
“Yes, just like those flowers. There's something strained, but there's beauty in that. Something like that”
“Furthermore--though it was quite irrelevant now--he had no idea his killer, Kazuo Kiriyama, had, in his mansion that was much larger than Toshinori's home in Shiroiwa-cho, mastered the violin at a ...”
“Dont ever let desperation take the seat of inspiration in you! Always live inspired no matter what! For though something might be wrong somewhere, something is always right somewhere! If you have l...”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with th...”
“On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth.”
“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to thin...”
“Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.”
“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air ...”
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
“Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat ...”
“The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival”