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A Poet Might Die At Twenty-one, A Revolutionary Or A Rock Star At Twenty Four. But After That You Assume Everything’s Going To Be All Right. You’ve Made It Past Dead Man’s Curve And You’re Out Of The Tunnel, Cruising Straight For Your Destination Down A Six Lane Highway Whether You Want It Or Not.

-Haruki Murakami

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A Poet Might Die

Haruki Murakami

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A Poet Might Die At Twenty-one, A Revolutionary Or A Rock Star At Twenty Four. But After That You Assume Everything’s Going To Be All Right. You’ve Made It Past Dead Man’s Curve And You’re Out Of The Tunnel, Cruising Straight For Your Destination Down A Six Lane Highway Whether You Want It Or Not.

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There Is Nothing So Cruel In This World As The Desolation Of Having Nothing To Hope For.

Most Human Activities Are Predicated On The Assumption That Life Goes On. If You Take That Premise Away, What Is There Left?

Don't Let Thoughts Of Me Hold You Back. Just Do What You Want To Do. Otherwise, I Might End Up Taking You With Me, And That Is The One Thing I Don't Want To Do. I Don't Want To Interfere With Your Life.

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I Go Back To The Reading Room, Where I Sink Down In The Sofa And Into The World Of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, Like A Movie Fadeout, The Real World Evaporates. I'm Alone, Inside The World Of The Story. My Favourite Feeling In The World.

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A Theory Is A Battlefield In Your Head.

And Once The Storm Is Over, You Won’t Remember How You Made It Through, How You Managed To Survive. You Won’t Even Be Sure, Whether The Storm Is Really Over. But One Thing Is Certain. When You Come Out Of The Storm, You Won’t Be The Same Person Who Walked In. That’s What This Storm’s All About.

When You Are Used To The Kind Of Life -of Never Getting Anything You Want- You Stop Knowing What It Is You Want.

The Sad Truth Is That Certain Types Of Things Can't Go Backward. Once They Start Going Forward, No Matter What You Do, They Can't Go Back The Way They Were. If Even One Little Thing Goes Awry, Then That's How It Will Stay Forever.

I Realize Full Well How Hard It Must Be To Go On Living Alone In A Place From Which Someone Has Left You, But There Is Nothing So Cruel In This World As The Desolation Of Having Nothing To Hope For.

Curiosity Can Bring Guts Out Of Hiding At Times, Maybe Even Get Them Going. But Curiosity Usually Evaporates. Gust Have To Go For The Long Haul. Curiosity's Like A Fun Friend You Can't Really Trust. It Turns You On And Then It Leaves You To Make It On Your Own - With Whatever Guts You Can Muster

Constipation Was One Of The Things She Hated Most In The World, On Par With Despicable Men Who Commit Domestic Violence And Narrow-minded Religious Fundamentalists.

Domestic Violence

If You Listen To The Radio For A Whole Hour There's Maybe One Decent Song. The Rest Is Mass-produced Garbage

Understanding' Is Merely The Sum Total Of Our Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

We Fell Silent Again. The Thing We Had Shared Was Nothing More Than A Fragment Of Time That Had Died Longe Ago.even So, A Faint Glimmer Of That Warm Memory Still Claimed A Part Of My Heart. And When Death Claim Me, No Doubt I Would Walk Along By That Faint Light In The Brief Instant Before Being Flung Once Again Into The Abyss Of Nothingness

At Any Rate, That’s How I Started Running. Thirty Three—that’s How Old I Was Then. Still Young Enough, Though No Longer A Young Man. The Age That Jesus Christ Died. The Age That Scott Fitzgerald Started To Go Downhill. That Age May Be A Kind Of Crossroads In Life. That Was The Age When I Began My Life As A Runner, And It Was My Belated, But Real, Starting Point As A Novelist.

Did You Ever See Anyone Shot By A Gun Without Bleeding?

Sometimes When I'm With You, I Remember Things I Lost When I Was Your Age. Like I Remember The Sound Of The Rain And The Smell Of The Wind.

To Be Able To Grasp Something Of Value, Sometimes You Have To Perform Seemingly Inefficient Acts.

I Write My Novels Personally, Desperately And Non-negligently. When I Write My Novels, I Think About My Novels Only, And Never Do Other Works.

What We Needed Were Not Words And Promises But A Steady Accumulation Of Small Realities.

Each Person Feels Pain In His Own Way, Each Has His Own Scars.

The Good Thing About Writing Books Is That You Can Dream While You Are Awake. If It’s A Real Dream, You Cannot Control It. When Writing The Book, You Are Awake; You Can Choose The Time, The Length, Everything. I Write For Four Or Five Hours In The Morning And When The Time Comes, I Stop. I Can Continue The Next Day. If It’s A Real Dream, You Can’t Do That.

The Sense Of Tragedy - According To Aristotle - Comes, Ironically Enough, Not From The Protagonist's Weak Points But From His Good Qualities. Do You Know What I'm Getting At? People Are Drawn Deeper Into Tragedy Not By Their Defects But By Their Virtues. ... [but] We Accept Irony Through A Device Called Metaphor. And Through That We Grow And Become Deeper Human Beings.

We Knew Exactly What We Wanted In Each Other. And Even So, It Ended. One Day It Stopped, As If The Film Simply Slipped Off The Reel.

To Me, Love Is A Pure Idea Forged In Flesh, Awkwardly Maybe, But It Had To Connect To Somewhere, Despite Twists And Turns Of Underground Cable. An All-too-perfect Thing. Sometimes The Lines Get Crossed. Or You Get A Wrong Number. But That's Nobody's Fault. It'll Always Be Like That, So Long As We Exist In This Physical Form. As A Matter Of Principle.

No Matter What Form The Relationship Might Take, He Was The Only Person She Could Picture Sharing Her Life With.

I Saw That She Was Crying. Before I Knew It, I Was Kissing Her. Others On The Platform Were Staring At Us, But I Didn't Care About Such Things Anymore. We Were Alive, She And I. And All We Had To Think About Was Continuing To Live.

The Strength I'm Looking For Isn't The Type Where You Win Or Lose. I'm Not After A Wall That'll Repel Power Coming From Outside. What I Want Us The Kind Of Strength To Be Able To Absorb That Kind Of Power, To Stand Up To It.the Strength To Quietly Endure Things - Unfairness, Misfortunes, Sadness, Mistakes, Misunderstandings.

My Arm Was Not What She Needed, But The Arm Of Someone Else. My Warmth Was Not What She Needed, But The Warmth Of Someone Else.

There Was Just One Moon. That Familiar, Yellow, Solitary Moon. The Same Moon That Silently Floated Over Fields Of Pampas Grass, The Moon That Rose--a Gleaming, Round Saucer--over The Calm Surface Of Lakes, That Tranquilly Beamed Down On The Rooftops Of Fast-asleep Houses. The Same Moon That Brought The High Tide To Shore, That Softly Shone On The Fur Of Animals And Enveloped And Protected Travelers At Night. The Moon That, As A Crescent, Shaved Slivers From The Soul--or, As A New Moon, Silently Bathed The Earth In Its Own Loneliness. That Moon.

Sometimes When I Think Of Life, I Feel Like A Piece Of Driftwood Washed Up On Shore.

I Don't Know A Whole Lot About Symbolism. There Seems To Me To Be A Potential Danger In Symbolism. I Feel More Comfortable With Metaphors And Similes.

Silence. How Long It Lasted, I Couldn't Tell. It Might Have Been Five Seconds, It Might Have Been A Minute. Time Wasn't Fixed. It Wavered, Stretched, Shrank. Or Was It Me That Wavered, Stretched, And Shrank In The Silence? I Was Warped In The Folds Of Time, Like A Reflection In A Fun House Mirror.

Loving Another Person Is A Wonderful Thing, And If That Love Is Sincere, No One Ends Up Tossed Into A Labyrinth. You Have To Have More Faith In Yourself.

I'm The Kind Of Person Who Has To Totally Commit To Whatever I Do.

Everybody Burns Out In This World; Amateur, Pro, It Doesn't Matter, They All Burn Out, They All Get Hurt, The Ok Guys And The Not-ok Guys Both. That's Why Everybody Takes Out A Little Insurance. I've Got Some Too, Here At The Bottom Of The Heap. That Way, You Manage To Survive If You Burn Out. If You're All By Yourself And Don't Belong Anywhere, You Go Down Once, And You're Out. Finished.

Memory Is Like Fiction; Or Else It's Fiction That's Like Memory. This Really Came Home To Me Once I Started Writing Fiction, That Memory Seemd A Kind Of Fiction, Or Vice Versa. Either Way, No Matter How Hard You Try To Put Everything Neatly Into Shape, The Context Wanders This Way And That, Until Finally The Context Isn't Even There Anymore... Warm With Life, Hopeless Unstable.

How Many Sundays - How Many Hundreds Of Sundays Like This - Lay Ahead Of Me? “quiet, Peaceful, And Lonely,” I Said Aloud To Myself. On Sundays, I Didn't Wind My Spring.

You Like To Write. It's The Single Most Important Quality For Someone Who Wants To Be A Writer. But Not In Itself Enough.

The Whole Terrible Fight Occured In The Area Of Imagination. That Is The Precise Location Of Our Battlefield. It Is There, That We Experience Our Victories And Defeats.

Victory And Defeat

If You Never Noticed, It Never Happened.

Reality Was Utterly Coolheaded And Utterly Lonely.

I Spent Thirty-three Years In Another Man's Shadow. I Went Everywhere He Went, I Helped Him With Everything He Did. I Was In A Sense A Part Of Him. When You Live Like That For A Long Time, You Gradually Lose Track Of What It Is You Yourself Really Want Out Of Life

Once A Guy Starts Using A Wig, He Has To Keep Using One. It's, Like, His Fate. That's Why Wig Makers Make Such Huge Profits. I Hate To Say It, But They're Like Drug Dealers.

I'll Write To You. A Super-long Letter, Like In An Old-fashioned Novel

Time Really Is One Big Continuous Cloth, No? We Habitually Cut Out Pieces Of Time To Fit Us, So We Tend To Fool Ourselves Into Thinking That Time Is Our Size, But It Really Goes On And On.

The Little Things Are Important, Mr. Wind-up Bird.

"they Tell Us That The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself, But I Don't Believe That." He Said. Then, A Moment Later, He Added: "oh, The Fear Is There, All Right. It Comes To Us In Many Different Forms, At Different Times, And Overwhelms Us. But The Most Frightening Thing We Can Do At Such Times Is To Turn Our Backs On It, To Close Our Eyes. For Then We Take The Most Precious Thing Inside Us And Surrender It To Something Else. In My Case, That Something Was The Wave."

Whether In Music Or In Fiction, The Most Basic Thing Is Rhythm. Your Style Needs To Have Good, Natural, Steady Rhythm, Or People Won't Keep Reading Your Work.

My Priority Is My Books, At Least At This Point. What I Have To Do Is Write The Narrative Of This Time.

I Have Come To Think That Life Is A Far More Limited Thing Than Those In The Midst Of Its Maelstorm Realize. That Light Shines Into The Act Of Life For Only The Briefest Moment - Perhaps Only A Matter Of Seconds. Once It Is Gone And Failed To Grasp Its Offered Revelation, There Is No Second Chance. One May Have To Live The Rest Of One's Life In Hopeless Depth Of Loneliness And Remorse. In That Twilight World, One Can No Longer Look Forward To Anything. All That Such A Person Holds In His Hands Is The Withered Corpse Of What Should Have Been.

His Heart, Like Mine, Was Ticking Off The Time Allotted To His Small Restless Body.

Lots Of Different Ways To Live And Lots Of Different Ways To Die. But In The End That Doesn't Make A Bit Of Difference. All That Remains Is A Desert.

Another Person's Life Is That Person's Life. You Can't Take Responsibility.

Taking Responsibility

I Stare At This Ceaseless, Rushing Crowd And Imagine A Time A Hundred Years From Now. In A Hundred Years Everybody Here-me Included-will Have Disappeared From The Face Of The Earth And Turned Into Ashes Or Dust. A Weird Thought, But Everything In Front Of Me Starts To Seem Unreal, Like A Gust Of Wind Could Blow It All Away.

The Body Is Not The Only Target Of Rape. Violence Does Not Always Take A Visible Form, And Not All Wounds Gush Blood.

I Read Naoko's Letter Again And Again, And Each Time I Read It I Would Be Filled With The Same Unbearable Sadness I Used To Feel Whenever Naoko Stared Into My Eyes. I Had No Way To Deal With It, No Place I Could Take It To Or Hide It Away. Like The Wind Passing Over My Body, It Had Neither Shape Nor Weight, Nor Could I Wrap Myself In It.

I Just Wanted To Write Something About Running, But I Realized That To Write About My Running Is To Write About My Writing. It's A Parallel Thing In Me.

I'm Always Tripped Up By The Eternal Who Am I?

Ever Since Time Began (when Was That, I Wonder?), It's Been Moving Ever Forward Without A Moment's Rest. And One Of The Privileges Given To Those Who've Avoided Dying Young Is The Blessed Right To Grow Old.

That's The Kind Of Death That Frightens Me. The Shadow Of Death Slowly, Slowly Eats Away At The Region Of Life, And Before You Know It Everything's Dark And You Can't See, And The People Around You Think Of You As More Dead Than Alive.

Shadow Of Death

Far Away, I Could Hear Them Lapping Up My Brains. Like Macbeth's Witches, The Three Lithe Cats Surrounded My Broken Head, Slurping Up That Thick Soup Inside. The Tips Of Their Rough Tongues Licked The Soft Folds Of My Mind. And With Each Lick My Consciousness Flickered Like A Flame And Faded Away.

No Matter What The Situation May Be, I Still Take Pleasure In Witnessing The Joy Of Others.

That's All I Think About These Days. Must Be Because I Have So Much Time To Kill Every Day. When You Don't Have Anything To Do, Your Thoughts Get Really, Really Far Out - So Far Out You Can't Follow Them All The Way To The End.

To Know One’s Own State Is Not A Simple Matter. One Cannot Look Directly At One’s Own Face With One’s Own Eyes, For Example. One Has No Choice But To Look At One’s Reflection In The Mirror. Through Experience, We Come To Believe That The Image Is Correct, But That Is All.

Time Flows In Strange Ways On Sundays, And Sights Become Mysteriously Distorted.

Such Wounds To The Heart Will Probably Never Heal. But We Cannot Simply Sit And Stare At Our Wounds Forever.

Cell Phones Are So Convenient That They're An Inconvenience.

If You Can’t Understand It Without An Explanation, You Can’t Understand It With An Explanation.

Time Weighs Down On You Like An Old, Ambiguous Dream. You Keep On Moving, Trying To Sleep Through It. But Even If You Go To The Ends Of The Earth, You Won't Be Able To Escape It. Still, You Have To Go There- To The Edge Of The World. There's Something You Can't Do Unless You Get There.

On Any Given Day, Something Claims Our Attention. Anything At All, Inconsequential Things. A Rosebud, A Misplaced Hat, That Sweater We Liked As A Child, An Old Gene Pitney Record. A Parade Of Trivia With No Place To Go. Things That Bump Around In Our Consciousness For Two Or Three Days Then Go Back To Wherever They Came From... To Darkness. We've Got All These Wells Dug In Our Hearts. While Above The Wells, Birds Flit Back And Forth.

But Didn't You Say You Were Satisfied With Your Life?" "word Games," I Dismissed. "every Army Needs A Flag.

The Ones With No Imagination Are Always The Quickest To Justify Themselves.

Her Partially Open Lips Now Opened Wide, And Her Soft, Fragrant Tongue Entered His Mouth, Where It Began A Relentless Search For Unformed Words, For A Secret Code Engraved There. Tengo's Own Tongue Responded Unconsciously To This Movement And Soon Their Tongues Were Like Two Young Snakes In A Spring Meadow, Newly Wakened From Their Hibernation And Hungrily Intertwining, Each Led On By The Other's Scent.

There Are Lots Of Things We Never Understand, No Matter How Many Years We Put On, No Matter How Much Experience We Accumulate.

Death Was Not The Opposite Of Life. It Was Already Here, Within My Being, It Had Always Been Here, And No Struggle Would Permit Me To Forget That.

Since I Have Come To America, I Am Often Asked Whether My Next Novel Will Be Set In America. I Don't Think It Will. I Think I Will Be Living In America For Some Time To Come, But While Living In America, I Would Like To Write About Japanese Society From The Outside.

Every Writer Has His Writing Technique - What He Can And Can't Do To Describe Something Like War Or History. I'm Not Good At Writing About Those Things, But I Try Because I Feel It Is Necessary To Write That Kind Of Thing.

Strong And Independent? I’m Neither. I’m Just Being Pushed Along By Reality, Whether I Like It Or Not.

Of Course It Hurt That We Could Never Love Each Other In A Physical Way. We Would Have Been Far More Happy If We Had. But That Was Like The Tides, The Change Of Seasons--something Immutable, An Immovable Destiny We Could Never Alter. No Matter How Cleverly We Might Shelter It, Our Delicate Friendship Wasn't Going To Last Forever. We Were Bound To Reach A Dead End. That Was Painfully Clear.

I'm An Average Person. Is Just That I Like Reading.

If You Try To Use Your Head To Think About Things, People Don't Want To Have Anything To Do With You

I'm Not A Fast Reader. I Like To Linger Over Each Sentence, Enjoying The Style. If I Don't Enjoy The Writing, I Stop.

There Are Symbolic Dreams-- Dreams That Symbolize Some Reality. Then There Are Symbolic Realities -- Realities That Symbolize A Dream. Symbols Are What You Might Call The Honorary Town Councillors Of The Worm Universe. In The Worm Universe, There Is Nothing Unusual About A Dairy Cow Seeking A Pair Of Pliers. A Cow Is Bound To Get Her Pliers Sometime. It Has Nothing To Do With Me.

Even If There Were Two Of Me, I Still Couldn't Do All That Has To Be Done. No Matter What, Though, I Keep Up My Running. Running Every Day Is A Kind Of Lifeline For Me, So I'm Not Going To Lay Off Or Quit Just Because I'm Busy. If I Used Being Busy As An Excuse Not To Run, I'd Never Run Again. I Have Only A Few Reasons To Keep On Running, And A Truckload Of Them To Quit. All I Can Do Is Keep Those Few Reasons Nicely Polished.

It’s Precisely Because Of The Pain, The We Can Get The Feeling, Through This Process, Of Really Being Alive—or At Least A Partial Sense Of It.

I Find Myself Thinking About My Ongoing Existence As A Human Being And The Path That Lies Ahead Of Me. Though Of Course These Thoughts Lead To But One Place - Death.

I Think Memory Is The Most Important Asset Of Human Beings. It's A Kind Of Fuel; It Burns And It Warms You. My Memory Is Like A Chest: There Are So Many Drawers In That Chest, And When I Want To Be A Fifteen-year-old Boy, I Open Up A Certain Drawer And I Find The Scenery I Saw When I Was A Boy In Kobe. I Can Smell The Air, And I Can Touch The Ground, And I Can See The Green Of The Trees. That's Why I Want To Write A Book.

Not Everything Was Lost In The Flow Of Time

People With Dark Souls Have Nothing But Dark Dreams. People With Really Dark Souls Do Nothing But Dream.

I Go By The Gut. I Might Not Appear To Have Any Talent But I've Got Plenty Of Gut Instinct.

I'm Not Trying To Imply I Can Keep Up This Silent, Isolated Facade All The Time. Sometimes The Wall I've Erected Around Me Comes Crumbling Down. It Doesn't Happen Very Often, But Sometimes, Before I Even Realize What's Going On, There I Am--naked And Defenseless And Totally Confused. At Times Like That I Always Feel An Omen Calling Out To Me, Like A Dark, Omnipresent Pool Of Water. ~page 10

I Guess I Felt Attached To My Weakness. My Pain And Suffering Too. Summer Light, The Smell Of A Breeze, The Sound Of Cicadas - If I Like These Things, Why Should I Apologize?

Judging The Mistakes Of Strangers Is An Easy Thing To Do - And It Feels Pretty Good.

When A Writer Develops A Story, He Is Confronted With A Poison That Is Inside Him. If You Don't Have That Poison, Your Story Will Be Boring And Uninspired. It's Like Fugu: The Flesh Of The Pufferfish Is Extremely Tasty, But The Roe, The Liver, The Heart Can Be Lethally Toxic.

If She Did Experience Sex-or Something Close To It-in High School, I'm Sure It Would Have Been Less Out Of Sexual Desire Or Love Than Literary Curiosity.

The World In Books Seemed So Much More Alive To Me Than Anything Outside. I Could See Things I'd Never Seen Before. Books And Music Were My Best Friends. I Had A Couple Of Good Friends At School, But Never Met Anyone I Could Really Speak My Heart To.

It Occurred To Me What A Simple Thing Reality Is, How Easy It Is To Make It Work. It's Just Reality. Just Housework. Just A Home. Like Running A Simple Machine. Once You Learn To Run It, It's Just A Matter Of Repetition. You Push This Button And Pull That Lever. You Adjust A Gauge, Put On The Lid, Set The Timer. The Same Thing, Over And Over.

At Least He Never Walked.

So Many Dreams, So Many Disappointments, So Many Promises. And In The End, They All Just Vanish.

I Closed My Eyes And Tried To Sleep. But It Was Not Until Much Later That I Was Able To Get Any Real Sleep. In A Place Far Away From Anyone Or Anywhere, I Drifted Off For A Moment.

With Each Passing Moment I'm Becoming Part Of The Past. There Is No Future For Me, Just The Past Steadily Accumulating.

Passing Moments

I’ve Never Once Thought About How I Was Going To Die,” She Said. “i Can’t Think About It. I Don’t Even Know How I’m Going To Live.

He Was Silent For Thirty Seconds, Maybe A Minute. I Uncrossed My Legs Under The Table And Wondered If This Was The Right Moment To Leave. It Was As If My Whole Life Revolved Around Trying To Judge The Right Point In A Conversation To Say Goodbye.

Most Near-future Fictions Are Boring. It's Always Dark And Always Raining, And People Are So Unhappy.

Music Brings A Warm Glow To My Vision, Thawing Mind And Muscle From Their Endless Wintering.

This Is The Extent Of His Knowledge Of The Sea: It Was Very Big, It Was Salty, And Fish Lived There.

Math Is Like Water. It Has A Lot Of Difficult Theories, Of Course, But Its Basic Logic Is Very Simple. Just As Water Flows From High To Low Over The Shortest Possible Distance, Figures Can Only Flow In One Direction. You Just Have To Keep Your Eye On Them For The Route To Reveal Itself. That’s All It Takes. You Don’t Have To Do A Thing. Just Concentrate Your Attention And Keep Your Eyes Open, And The Figures Make Everything Clear To You. In This Whole, Wide World, The Only Thing That Treats Me So Kindly Is Math.

I Think People Who Share My Dreams Can Enjoy Reading My Novels. And That's A Wonderful Thing. I Said That Myths Are Like A Reservoir Of Stories, And If I Can Act As A Similar Kind Of "reservoir," Albeit A Modest One, That Would Make Me Very Happy.

We Can, If We So Choose, Wander Aimlessly Over The Continent Of The Arbitrary. Rootless As Some Winged Seed Blown About On A Serendipitous Spring Breeze.

An Unhealthy Soul Requires A Healthy Body.

Death Leaves Cans Of Shaving Cream Half-used.

Something Inside Me Had Dropped Away, And Nothing Came In To Fill The Cavern.

In Terms Of Evolutionary History, It Was Only Yesterday That Men Learned To Walk Around On Two Legs And Get In Trouble Thinking Complicated Thoughts. So Don't Worry, You'll Burn Out.

Most Young People Were Getting Jobs In Big Companies, Becoming Company Men. I Wanted To Be Individual.

There Are Many Things We Only See Clearly In Retrospect.

You Know What I'd Really Like To Do The Most Right Now? Climb Up To The Top Of Some High Place Like The Pyramids. The Highest Place I Can Find. Where You Can See Forever. Stand On The Very Top, Look All Around The World, See All The Scenery, And See With My Own Eyes What's Been Lost From The World.

Ice Contains No Future , Just The Past, Sealed Away. As If They're Alive, Everything In The World Is Sealed Up Inside, Clear And Distinct. Ice Can Preserve All Kinds Of Things That Way- Cleanly, Clearly. That's The Essence Of Ice, The Role It Plays.

I Move, Therefore I Am.

Even If You Managed To Escape From One Cage, Weren't You Just In Another, Larger One?

It's Not Right For One Friend To Do All The Giving And The Other To Do All The Taking: That's Not Real Friendship.

As With Marathon Runs And Lengths Of Toilet Paper, There Had To Be Standards To Measure Up To.

The World In Books Seemed So Much More Alive To Me Than Anything Outside. I Could See Things I'd Never Seen Before. Books And Music Were My Best Friends. I Had A Couple Of Good Friends At School, But Never Met Anyone I Could Really Speak My Heart To. We'd Just Make Small Talk, Play Soccer Together. When Something Bothered Me, I Didn't Talk With Anyone About It. I Thought It Over All By Myself, Came To A Conclusion, And Took Action Alone. Not That I Really Felt Lonely. I Thought That's Just The Way Things Are. Human Beings, In The Final Analysis, Have To Survive On Their Own.

A Person Learns How To Love Himself Through The Simple Acts Of Loving And Being Loved By Someone Else.

You Know, Eating's Much More Important Than Most People Think. There Comes A Time In Your Life When You've Just Got To Have Something Super-delicious. And When You're Standing At That Crossroads Your Whole Life Can Change, Depending On Which One You Go Into - The Good Restaurant Or The Awful One.

Reading Was Like An Addiction; I Read While I Ate, On The Train, In Bed Until Late At Night, In School, Where I'd Keep The Book Hidden So I Could Read During Class. Before Long I Bought A Small Stereo And Spent All My Time In My Room, Listening To Jazz Records. But I Had Almost No Desire To Talk To Anyone About The Experience I Gained Through Books And Music. I Felt Happy Just Being Me And No One Else. In That Sense I Could Be Called A Stack-up Loner.

One Listless Day Followed Another, With Nothing To Distinguish One From The Next. You Could Have Changed The Order And No One Would Have Noticed.

A Certain Type Of Perfection Can Only Be Realized Through A Limitless Accumulation Of The Imperfect.

I Don't Want Our Relationship To End Like This. You're One Of The Very Few Friends I Have, And It Hurts Not Being Able To See You. When Am I Going To Be Able To Talk To You? I Want You To Tell Me That Much, At Least.

My Face, My Self, What Would They Mean To Anybody? Just Another Stiff. So This Self Of Mine Passes Some Other's Self On The Street - What Do We Have To Say To Each Other? Hey There! Hi Ya!that's About It. Nobody Raises A Hand. No One Turns Around To Take Another Look.

Pulled Into My Convenient Neighborhood Fast Food Restaurant. I Ordered Shrimp Salad, Onion Rings, And A Beer. The Shrimp Were Straight Out Of The Freezer, The Onion Rings Soggy. Looking Around The Place, Though, I Failed To Spot A Single Customer Banging On A Tray Or Complaining To A Waitress. So I Shut Up And Finished My Food. Expect Nothing, Get Nothing.

Nights Without Work I Spend With Whisky And Books.

All You Have To Do Is Wait,” I Explained. “sit Tight And Wait For The Right Moment. Not Try To Change Anything By Force, Just Watch The Drift Of Things. Make An Effort To Cast A Fair Eye On Everything. If You Do That, You Just Naturally Know What To Do. But Everyone’s Always Too Busy. They’re Too Talented, Their Schedules Are Too Full. They’re Too Interested In Themselves To Think About What’s Fair.

Like Most Novelists, I Like To Do Exactly The Opposite Of What I'm Told. It's In My Nature As A Novelist. Novelists Can't Trust Anything They Haven't Seen With Their Own Eyes Or Touched With Their Own Hands.

You Couldn’t Begin To Imagine Who I Am, Where I’m Going, Or What I’m About To Do, All Of You Are Trapped Here. You Can’t Go Anywhere, Forward Or Back. But I’m Not Like You. I Have Work To Do. I Have A Mission To Accomplish. And So, With Your Permission, I Shall Move Ahead.

I'm Not So Weird To Me.

Killing Time Is Not An Easy Job.

When Microorganisms Die, They Make Oil; When Huge Timbers Fall, They Make Coal. But Everything Here Was Pure, Unadulterated Rubbish That Didn't Make Anything. Where Does A Busted Videodeck Get You?

Most Runners Run Not Because They Want To Live Longer, But Because They Want To Live Life To The Fullest.

It's Basically The Same In All Periods Of Societies. If You Belong To The Majority, You Can Avoid Thinking About Lots Of Troubling Things.' 'and Those Troubling Things Are All You /can/ Think About When You're One Of The Few.' 'that's About The Size Of It,' She Said Mournfully. 'but Maybe, If You're In A Situation Like That, You Learn To Think For Yourself.' 'yes, But Maybe What You End Up Thinking For Yourself /about/ Is All Those Troubling Things.

I Could Have Been A Cult Writer If I'd Kept Writing Surrealistic Novels. But I Wanted To Break Into The Mainstream, So I Had To Prove That I Could Write A Realistic Book.

When I Wake Up, My Pillow’s Cold And Damp With Tears. But Tears For What? I Have No Idea.

There's No Such Thing As Perfect Writing, Just Like There's No Such Thing As Perfect Despair.

It Is My Huge Pleasure That My Novels Are Translated Into Languages That Are Read Among Small Numbers Of People.

So For All That We Might Speak Words In Each Other's Vicinity, This Could Never Develop Into Anything That Could Be Called A Conversation. It Was As Though We Were Speaking In Different Languages. If The Dalai Lama Were On His Deathbed And The Jazz Musician Eric Dolphy Were To Try To Explain To Him The Importance Of Choosing One's Engine Oil In Accordance With Changes In The Sound Of The Bass Clarinet, That Exchange Might Have Been More Worthwhile And Effective Than My Conversations With Noboru Wataya.

Oshima's Silent For A Time As He Gazes At The Forest, Eyes Narrowed. Birds Are Flitting From One Branch To The Next. His Hands Are Clasped Behind His Head. "i Know How You Feel," He Finally Says. "but This Is Something You Have To Work Out On Your Own. Nobody Can Help You. That's What Love's All About, Kafka. You're The One Having Those Wonderful Feelings, But You Have To Go It Alone As You Wander Through The Dark. Your Mind And Body Have To Bear It All. All By Yourself.

I'm Not Human. I'm A Piece Of Machinery. I Don't Need To Feel A Thing. Just Forge On Ahead.

Does G Get Angry Because It Follows F In The Alphabet? Does Page 68 In A Book Start A Revolution Because It Follows 67?

It's Just Like Yeats Said. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Flip This Around And You Could Say That Where There's No Power To Imagine, No Responsibility Can Arise.

This Person, This Self, This Me, Finally, Was Made Somewhere Else. Everything Had Come From Somewhere Else, And It Would All Go Somewhere Else. I Was Nothing But A Pathway For The Person Known As Me.

Maybe Working On The Little Things As Dutifully And Honestly As We Can Is How We Stay Sane When The World Is Falling Apart.

A Person's Last Moments Are An Important Thing. You Can't Choose How You're Born But You Can Choose How You Die.

An Empty Shell. Those Were The First Words That Sprang To Mind. .... Something Incredibly Important - .. - Had Disappeared From Miu For Good. Leaving Behind Not Life, But Its Absence

Then She Took My Hand And Touched It To The Wound Beside Her Eye. I Caressed The Half-inch Scar. As I Did So, The Waves Of Her Consciousness Pulsed Through My Fingertips And Into Me - A Delicate Resonance Of Longing. Probably Someone Should Take This Girl In His Arms And Hold Her Tight, I Thought. Probably Someone Other Than Me. Someone Qualified To Give Her Something. "goodbye, Mr. Wind-up Bird. See You Again Sometime.

For Novelists Or Musicians, If They Really Want To Create Something, They Need To Go Downstairs And Find A Passage To Get Into The Second Basement. What I Want To Do Is Go Down There, But Still Stay Sane.

So Once You're Dead There's Just Nothing? Mari: Basically... Korogi: I Get So Scared When I Start Thinking About This Stuff. I Can Hardly Breathe, And My Whole Body Wants To Shrink Into A Corner. It's So Much Easier To Just Believe In Reincarnation.

Writers Have To Keep On Writing If They Want To Mature, Like Caterpillars Endlessly Chewing On Leaves.

As Long As You Have The Courage To Admit Mistakes, Things Can Be Turned Around.

Tengo Could Hardly Believe It-- That In This Frantic, Labyrinth-like World, Two People's Hearts-- A Boy's And A Girl's-- Could Be Connected, Unchanged, Even Though They Hadn't Seen Each Other For Twenty Years.

Having An Object That Symbolizes Freedom Might Make A Person Happier Than Actually Getting The Freedom It Represents.

I Never Made Any Plan Before Writing, However I Succeeded. I Enjoyed Writing With Excitement ,"what Happen On The Next Page?"

It's A Terrible Thing When A Person Dies, Whatever The Circumstances. A Hole Opens Up In The World, And We Need To Pay The Proper Respects. If We Don't, The Hole Will Never Be Filled In Again.

I Wonder What Ants Do On Rainy Days?

Do You Know What ‘sputnik’ Means In Russian? ‘travelling Companion’. I Looked It Up In A Dictionary Not Long Ago. Kind Of A Strange Coincidence If You Think About It. I Wonder Why The Russians Gave Their Satellite That Strange Name. It’s Just A Poor Little Lump Of Metal, Spinning Around The Earth.

Spinning Around

If You Think About It, An Unfair Society Is A Society That Makes It Possible For You To Exploit Your Abilities To The Limit.

Open Your Eyes, Train Your Ears, Use Your Head. If A Mind You Have, Then Use It While You Can.

But I Didn't Understand Then. That I Could Hurt Somebody So Badly She Would Never Recover. That A Person Can, Just By Living, Damage Another Human Being Beyond Repair.

It's True That At The Time I Was Fond Of Kurt Vonnegut And Richard Brautigan, And It Was From Them That I Learned About This Kind Of Simple, Swift-paced Style, But The Main Reason For The Style Of My First Novel Is That I Simply Did Not Have The Time To Write Sustained Prose.

If There's Any Guy Crazy Enough To Attack Me, I'm Going To Show Him The End Of The World -- Close Up. I'm Going To Let Him See The Kingdom Come With His Own Eyes. I'm Going To Send Him Straight To The Southern Hemisphere And Let The Ashes Of Death Rain All Over Him And The Kangaroos And The Wallabies.

How Many Times Have You Said, 'this Is It. I've Finally Found My One True Love'? And How Many Times Has The Reality Turned Out Differently? Paperback Romances And Fairy Tales Promote An Ideal Of A First And Only Love, But Few Of Us Can Claim To Have Had Such Uncomplicated Good Fortune. For Most People, The Process Of Finding The Perfect Partner Is One Trial And Error: Breakups, Makeups, Missed Opportunities And Misunderstandings. Human Love Is A Fragile Creation, And Sometimes The Smallest Thing - The Wrong Choice Of Words Or A Single Clumsy Gesture - Can Make Love Shatter, Stall Or Fade Away.

Still, In The End, We All Die Just The Same.

What Do We Talk About? Just Ordinary Things. What Happened Today, Or Books We've Read, Or Tomorrow's Weather, You Know. Don't Tell Me You're Wondering If People Jump To Their Feet And Shout Stuff Like 'it'll Rain Tomorrow If A Polar Bear Eats The Stars Tonight!

What I Was Chasing In Circles Must Have Been The Tail Of The Darkness Inside Me.

Let The Wind Change Direction A Little Bit, And Their Cries Turned To Whispers.

When There's Nothing To Do, You Do Nothing Slowly And Intently.

If I Used Being Busy As An Excuse Not To Run, I'd Never Run Again. I Have Only A Few Reasons To Keep On Running, And A Truckload Of Them To Quit.

I Am Nothing. I’m Like Someone Who’s Been Thrown Into The Ocean At Night, Floating All Alone. I Reach Out, But No One Is There. I Call Out, But No One Answers. I Have No Connection To Anything.

I Wander Though China. Without Ever Having Boarded A Plane. My Travels Take Place Here In The Tokoyo Subways, In The Backseat Of A Taxi... All Of A Sudden This City Will Start To Go. In A Flash, The Buildings Will Crumble. Over The Tokyo Streets Will Fall My China, Like Ash, Leaching Into Everything It Touches. Slowly, Gradually, Until Nothing Remains. No, This Isn't A Place For Me.

My Only Passions Were Books And Music. As You Might Guess, I Led A Lonely Life… Not That I Knew What I Wanted In Life - I Didn’t. I Loved Reading Novels To Distraction, But Didn’t Write Well Enough To Be A Novelist; Being An Editor Or A Critic Was Out, Too, Since My Tastes Ran To The Extremes. Novels Should Be For Pure Personal Enjoyment, I Decided, Not Part Of Your Work Or Study. That’s Why I Didn’t Study Literature

Thinking About Spaghetti That Boils Eternally But Is Never Done Is A Sad, Sad Thing.

Is It Possible To Become Friends With A Butterfly?

People Sometimes Sneer At Those Who Run Every Day, Claiming They'll Go To Any Length To Live Longer. But Don't Think That's The Reason Most People Run. Most Runners Run Not Because They Want To Live Longer, But Because They Want To Live Life To The Fullest.

In A Place Far Away From Anyone Or Anywhere, I Drifted Off For A Moment.

To Keep On Going, You Have To Keep Up The Rhythm.

Gazing At The Rain, I Consider What It Means To Belong, To Become Part Of Something. To Have Someone Cry For Me.

Hatred Is Like A Long, Dark Shadow. Not Even The Person It Falls Upon Knows Where It Comes From, In Most Cases. It Is Like A Two-edged Sword. When You Cut The Other Person, You Cut Yourself. The More Violently You Hack At The Other Person, The More Violently You Hack At Yourself. It Can Often Be Fatal. But It Is Not Easy To Dispose Of. Please Be Careful, Mr.okada. It Is Very Dangerous. Once It Has Taken Root In Your Heart, Hatred Is The Most Difficult Think In The World To Shake Off.

As If To Build A Fence Around The Fatal Emptiness Inside Her, She Had To Create A Sunny Person That She Became. But If You Peeled Away The Ornamental Egos That She Had Built, There Was Only An Abbys Of Nothingness And The Intense Thirst That Came With It. Though She Tried To Forget It, The Nothingness Would Visit Her Periodically - On A Lonely Rainy Afternoon, Or At Dawn When She Woke Up From A Nightmare. What She Needed At Such Times Was To Be Held By Someone, Anyone.

It's All Matter Of Attitude. You Could Let A Lot Of Things Bother You If You Wanted To But It's Pretty Much The Same Anywhere You Go, You Can Manage.

I Used To Run A Full Marathon In Three Hours And 25 Or 26 Minutes. Not Any More.

In Real Life Things Don’t Go So Smoothly. At Certain Points In Our Lives, When We Really Need A Clear-cut Solution, The Person Who Knocks At Our Door Is, More Likely Than Not, A Messenger Bearing Bad News.

My Grandpa Always Said Asking A Question Is Embarrassing For A Moment, But Not Asking Is Embarrassing For A Lifetime.

I've Never Met A Girl Who Thinks Like You." "a Lot Of People Tell Me That," She Said, Digging At A Cuticle. "but It's The Only Way I Know How To Think. Seriously. I'm Just Telling You What I Believe. It's Never Crossed My Mind That My Way Of Thinking Is Different From Other People's. I'm Not Trying To Be Different. But When I Speak Out Honestly, Everybody Thinks I'm Kidding Or Playacting. When That Happens, I Feel Like Everything Is Such A Pain!

It's The Real World, Full Of Gaps And Inconsistencies And Anticlimaxes.

Will You Wait For Me Forever?

People Need Routines. It's Like A Theme In Music. But It Also Restrictsyour Thoughts And Actions And Limits Your Freedom. It Structures Your Priorities And In Some Cases Distorts Your Logic.

As I See It, You Are Living With Something That You Keep Hidden Deep Inside. Something Heavy. I Felt It From The First Time I Met You. You Have A Strong Gaze, As If You Have Made Up Your Mind About Something. To Tell You The Truth, I Myself Carry Such Things Around Inside. Heavy Things. That Is How I Can See It In You.

I Just Gave Them A Little Scare. A Touch Of Psychological Terror. As Joseph Conrad Once Wrote, True Terror Is The Kind That Men Feel Towards Their Imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)

I'm Not A Fast Thinker, But Once I Am Interested In Something, I Am Doing It For Many Years.

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