Justin •••

“A farmhouse was blazing away right before us. It took an incredibly long time to burn to the ground. One could almost see the history of that house going up in flames along with its roof and pillars.”
― Osamu Dazai, Early Light

“At Christmastime I had got out the little artificial fir tree from deep inside the closet and assembled and decorated it with my daughter. That tree, its tiny lights twinkling. Her, motionless before it for a long time, rapt in its multicoloured drops of light. And me, standing back, looking on. To her, it was the most beautiful of sights, countless joys shimmering invitingly in their splendour. It was a cheap tree that Fojino had bought at a local supermarket when she was a year old, saying, 'This'll do for now, won't it? It'll only get broken with her touching it. They're really quite expensive.”
― Yūko Tsushima, Territory of Light

“At daycare the next morning, I learned of the boy's accidental death. My throat tightened at the thought of the scream I'd heard: so it was him. It seemed he had been playing alone on an outside walkway, and he had gone over the railing. What was he seeing as he fell with that cry? It was nighttime; the glow of streetlamps, lighted windows, and neon signs must have streamed like water around his falling body. Perhaps he gazed in amazement at the unfamiliar torrents of lights, wondering where he was going.”
― Yūko Tsushima, Territory of Light

“When I lie in the grass and look for a long time at a bug that was born yesterday and doesn't understand anything, it seems to me that its whole life consists of nothing but horror, and I see myself in it... I'm frightened mainly by the common place, which none of us can escape from. I'm unable to tell what in my actions is true or false, and they bother me; I'm aware that the conditions of life and my upbringing confined me to a narrow circle of lies, and that my whole life is nothing but a daily worry about deceiving myself and others and not noticing it, and I'm frightened by the thought that till death I won't get out of this lie.”
― Anton Chekhov, Fifty-Two Stories