Yoko Ogawa

Though I’ve tried, I’ve found no way to fill in the voids left by the Memory Police.

he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers. This gave us confidence even when our best efforts came to nothing.

I couldn’t hear him clearly, but I decided not to ask him to repeat himself, in case it had been something less romantic

Jealousy seems to make me suffer in the most unexpected ways

I must have had a good reason for wanting to kill myself, but I’ve forgotten what it was

If your big toe becomes infected with gangrene, you cut it off as soon as you can. If you do nothing, you end up losing the whole leg. The principle is the same. The only difference is that you can’t touch or see memories, or get inside the hearts they’re kept in. Each one of us hides them away in secret.

As it traversed the long rubber tube between the two funnels, all unnecessary sounds faded away, leaving only the soft, transparent liquid of his voice. I pressed my ear against the funnel, unwilling to waste even a single drop.

When we talked using this makeshift system, we were forced to move the funnel back and forth from our ears to our mouths, leaving a brief silence between each utterance. And thanks to these pauses, the most mundane conversation sounded quite important.

“It’s the perfect place. But I’ve watched from the wheelhouse on the boat, and I always wonder what happens to it after it vanishes into the waves.”

“I suspect it melts almost immediately,” R said. “Melts and mixes with the salt water, and then onto the fishes and the seaweed.”

“I suppose so. Or the whales drink it in, release it to the tides.”

there was no world of sleep. Just darkness stretching out in every direction. No, that doesn’t quite capture it. It wasn’t even darkness. There was nothing, nothing at all, no air or noise or gravity—not even me to experience them. Just overwhelming nothingness.