Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go… - Ryū Murakami

In Japan, even when you’re alone, you’re never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel among people with differently colored skin and eyes, whose language you don’t even speak very well – that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones.

That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask.

Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary , deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally.