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When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions tha...more

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I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

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No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief....more

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

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I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now maybe, she's where s...more

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Everything seems pointless since you left

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I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the one I had first slept with in my third year of high school. Chills ran through me as I realized how ba...more

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He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. "That's...more

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Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.

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Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth, I answered honestly. Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get ...more

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No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here.

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Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an e...more

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It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you.

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But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other ...more

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I'd swallow some whiskey and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this...more