"In Yasunari Kawata's story, 'The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket,' our adult narrator follows a group of children out capturing insects.('Each day, with cardboard, paper, brush, scissors, pen-knife and glue, the children made new lanterns out of their hearts and minds.')  A boy, offering what he thinks is a grasshopper to a girl, stands close to her.  Our narrator witnesses what they do not: 'The boy's lantern, which he held up alongside the girl's insect cage, inscribed his name, cut out in the green papered aperture, onto her white cotton kimono.  The girl's lantern, which dangled loosely from her wrist, did not project its pattern so clearly, but still one could make out, in a trembling patch of red on the boy's waist, the name "Kiyoko."'

"When I read these words, when I was caught in this moment, I cried.  This was even before the narrator infuses what he's seen into a crushing meditation; I think it was simply the way he looked on, in and out of the world he described ('Wide-eyed, I loitered near them.'), and the straight wonder of his description.  This was just the other day; I was on an airplane, flying between Salt Lake City and Portland.  Tears running down my face, I was overcome."