“I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny...”

“That was the only time, as I stood there, looking at that strange rubbish, feeling the wind coming across those empty fields, that I started to imagine just a little fantasy thing, because this was...”

“Nos-tal-gic, Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for nostalgic. Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Ver...”

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had...”

“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?”

“But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, ...”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”

“Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.”

“Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. W...”

“...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.”

“You cannot give out one frequency, that of disrespect, and expect respect to flow toward you. Neither can you hold on to your biases, prejudices, and negative thinking toward something, and expect ...”

“You have had many successes, and you have earned the right to be respected.”

“Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.”