“I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.”

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).

When someone tells you something big, it’s like you’re taking money from them, and there’s no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.

I never tell my boyfriend that I’m busy when I’m not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don’t agree with me. So it’s always okay, it’s always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.

Once you’ve recognized your own limits, you’ve raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you’re closer to the real you.

Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by ‘their happiness’ is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That’s not a bad thing.

This world of ours is piled high with farewells and goodbyes of so many different kinds, like the evening sky renewing itself again and again from one instant to the next-and I didn’t want to forget a single one.

Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you’ll never make it to the top.

Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated – defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.

You know, Chihiro, darling- all it takes is one little wrong step and you end up feeling frustrated your whole life, like me.

It didn’t matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.

The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.

What was important wasn’t the fireworks, it was that we were together this evening, together in this place, looking up into the sky at the same time.

She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn’t know how to handle.

I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.

it’ll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words -the color of a completely closed-in night

Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety’s not my forte.

In terms of perceptions of the culture, most people don’t think about music.

Virtually every major shift in cultural history can trace its origins to the work of a small group, often gathered around an innovative thinker or body of thought.

You can begin to see an amalgamation of cultures, the real beginning of one world.

Pop culture’s gotten much more disposable.

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten.