"I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her. Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed." —Chapter 1, page 10

"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life." —Chapter 2, page 25

"More than once I stretched my hand out in that darkness. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp." —Chapter 3, page 46

"'No, I just wanted to see how you'd react,' Midori said. 'But dying itself, I'm not afraid of. Really. Like here, I'd just be overcome with smoke and lose consciousness and die before I knew it. That doesn't frighten me at all, compared with the way I saw my mother and a few relatives die. All my relatives die after suffering...