Sosuke Natsukawa

Cats are, by nature, creatures of will. They don’t come and go at the convenience of human beings.’

‘I don’t know anything about spirit. I just love books.’

‘Books aren’t meant to be thrown. They’re made to be read.’

Rintaro suddenly understood what the tabby cat had meant when it said this adversary would be different from the first two. The men he’d met in the other two labyrinths, no matter how bizarre their behaviour, were, at heart, book-lovers. By contrast, the man sitting in front of them right now didn’t feel the slightest attachment to books. He treated them as trash, and didn’t feel even the teensiest bit bad about it. This was what the cat had meant when it said the man was extremely unpredictable.

There’s a big difference between the books you value and the ones that the rest of society wants

‘Thanks to you, many, many books have been freed. I’m truly grateful.’

‘Don’t give in to loneliness. You aren’t alone. You have many friends looking out for you.’

all too well

‘In our stifling daily lives, we’re all so occupied with ourselves that we stop thinking about others. When a person loses their own heart, they can’t feel another’s pain. They lie, hurt others, use weaker people as stepping stones to get ahead – they stop feeling anything. The world has become full of those kinds of people.’

‘Books have a soul.’