If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

All's well that ends well.'
'Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said.
Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?"
Aomame shook her head.
'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said.
Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.'
Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there.

Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody.

These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'