rayanamei:

She doesn’t know emotion, so there’s no difference between what she says and feels; there’s nothing ulterior about her. At first sight, then, you may theorize: that is where her very great beauty comes from, this surface, not without depth, but with the absence of its necessity–someone truly mystical.

No; Rei’s beauty comes from the truth that she has feelings. When she cried, it meant the waters of the pool were coming out at last. The struggle to draw your feelings forth, the reconciliation between your surface and your depth–that, I believe, is where we truly become alive, truly become human beings. And when I found the warmth below the coldness in her words, I synchronized with Rei for the first time. And it felt so good that I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my own heart.

What I learned from meeting a girl who didn’t know (1996, trans. by William Flanagan and David Ury), Megumi Hayashibara