“If we can’t convince a single person, not anyone at all, and if no one has any interest in our graves, you say we can simply turn away and go alone into the wilderness. Without knowing where it is we’re going. We might have to spend our days with only the sheep and stars to gaze at. The stars die and are born again, and it must be the same for the sheep, mustn’t it? You’d say that the world is unchanging. But if we lived like that, and eventually lost even the sad consciousness of our own inability to convince, that would be incredibly lonely, Ayami.”

—The director