Top Highlights

• His friends were probably right when they called it a pitiful little vacant house. He wondered if that had anything to do with the emptiness of his own world.
• If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.
• “If this is ever destroyed, it’ll mean the end of the world,” Noboru murmured, barely conscious. I guess I’d do anything to stop that, no matter how awful!
• Tales of women, anecdotes from shore, the endless boasting . . . he hated the lowbrow chatter meant to sweeten loneliness, the ritual of affirming ties with the brotherhood of men.
• Whereas most men choose to become sailors because they like the sea, Ryuji had been guided by an antipathy to land.