…one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn’t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny.
[…]“Hey, Watanabe, can you explain the difference between the English present subjunctive and past subjunctive?”
“I think I can,” I said.
“Let me ask you, then, what possible use is stuff like that for everyday life?”
“None at all,” I said. “It may not serve any concrete purpose but it does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in general more systematically.”
[…]I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running, and it’s the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can’t understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that?
[…]Are you familiar with Euripides? He was an ancient Greek—one of the ‘Big Three’ of Greek tragedy along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. […] What marks his plays is the way things get so mixed up the characters are trapped. […] And then what do you think happens? Simple—a god appears at the end and starts directing the traffic. […] He’s kind of a fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. They call this ‘deus ex machina.’ There’s almost always a deus ex machina in Euripides, and that’s where critical opinion divides over him.
[…]…no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.
