(...)

"How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile.
I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose.
"It may well be imperfect" I say "but it leaves traces. And we can follow them, like footsteps in the snow."
"Where do they lead?"
"To oneself" I answer. "That's what the mind is. without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."
I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the town, abve the wall.
"Not one thing is your fault" I comfort her.

-Haruki Murakami, Hard Boilde Wonder Land and the End of the World.