“When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell."
"Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes."
"You mean, there's no way to stop?"
"No, you stop all right - when you crash.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“I want to go home.' The moment the smell hit her, the words came into her head. She didn't know exactly what home it was she wanted to go to, certainly not the one she'd just left. But why didn't she want to go back there? And where did she want to go? She felt lost.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky liquid, but as her body gradually grew cold, he felt as though they'd been glued together. She seemed to be see-sawing between agony and ecstasy, but finally Satake pressed his lips over hers to quiet the groans-of pain or pleasure-that were leaking from her mouth. He found the hole that he had made in her side and worked his finger deep into the opening. Blood was pumping from the wound, staining their sex a gruesome crimson. He wanted to get further inside, to melt into her. As he was about to come, he pulled his lips from her and she whispered in his ear: "I'm finished . . . finished."
"I know," he'd said, and he could still hear the exact sound of his own voice.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“Pritisnila je na gumb dvigala. Šla bo in kupila letalsko vozovnico. Svoboda, ki jo išče, je njena, ne Satakejeva, ne Jajoina, ne Jošijina, in prepričana je bila, da mora biti tam nekje zunaj. Če so se za njo zaprla še ena vrata, nima druge izbire, kot da najde nova in jih odpre. Dvigalo, ki ji je prišlo naproti, je ječalo kot veter.
END.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“Did you pick out this outfit?" he asked, looking at her clothes.
"No," she said. She was wearing a cheap, bright red dress that she'd been given by another girl from the bar who shared the same apartment. "Someone gave it to me."
"I thought so," said Satake. "It doesn't suit you."
Then buy me on that does!--that was the sort of thing she would learn to say only later. That night she had just smiled vaguely to cover her embarrassment.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“She could see now why she'd crossed over the line. She hadn't understood that it was despair that made her seek out this other world. That was her motive, her reason for helping Yayoi. But what had been waiting for her on the other side? Nothing, that's what. She stared down at her white hands still gripping the sofa. If they came now and arrested her, they'd never be able to find out why she'd done it; they'd find no trace of what had spurred her on. She could hear the sound of doors closing behind her, leaving her utterly alone.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
Natsuo Kirino
Born place: in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan
Born date October 7, 1951
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“My job is never boring," Staples said. "There's nuts-and-bolts stuff like getting the tarpaulin over the shaft when it rains, and so in. Cataloging and reshelving. The shelves are in a shocking state. And when you've got everything ever written or lost to keep track of, it's quite a job. And there's fetching books.
"I used to really look forward to requests for books way down in the abyss. We'd all rope up, follow our lines down for miles. The order falls apart a way down but you learn to sniff out class-marks. Sometimes we'd be gone for weeks, fetching volumes.' She spoke with a faraway voice.
"There are risks. Hunters, animals, and accidents. Ropes that snap. Sometimes someone gets separated. Twenty years ago, I was in a group looking for a book someone had requested. I remember, it was called 'Oh, All Right Then': Bartleby Returns. We were led by Ptolemy Yes. He was the man taught me. Best librarian there's ever been, some say.
"Anyway, after weeks of searching, we ran out of food and had to turn back. No one likes it when we fail, so none of us were feeling great.
"We felt that much worse when we realized that we'd lost Ptolemy.
"Some people say he went off deliberately. That he couldn't bear not to find the book. That he's out there still in the Wordhoard Abyss, living off shelf-monkeys, looking. And that he'll be back one day, book in his hand.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“They way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn't very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, so we comprehend it - can we even remember it - until we can tell it as a story? And for events in times or places outside our own experience, we have nothing to go on but the stories other people tell us. Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it's then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty. If we let it drop from memory, only imagination can restore the least glimmer of it. If we lie about the past, forcing it to tell a story we want it to tell, to mean what we want it to mean, it loses its reality, becomes a fake. To bring the past along with us through time in the hold-alls of myth and history is a heavy undertaking; but as Lao Tzu says, wise people march along with the baggage wagons.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from Tales from Earthsea
“You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening.”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Be a Woman
“If God undertakes to clean an outhouse, let him not believe that his hands will remain clean.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, quote from Hard to Be a God
“He rolled his eyes and then frowned at both me and Ian (Somerhalder). “That guy takes a shit, too, you know.”
I shook my head to disagree. “No, he doesn’t. He’s still in god status and we all know that gods don’t poop.”
― Tina Reber, quote from Love Unrehearsed
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