“That’s fine, Mr Katagari. It’s better that you don’t remember. The whole terrible fight occurred in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battle field. It is there that we experience our victories and our defeats. Each and every one of us is a being of limited duration: all of us eventually go down to defeat. But as Ernest Hemingway saw so clearly, the ultimate value of our lives is decided not by how we win but by how we lose. You and I together, Mr Katagiri, were able to prevent the annihilation of Tokyo. We saved 150,000 people from the jaws of death. No one realizes it, but that is what we accomplished. “

Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, collected in After The Quake. Haruki Murakami