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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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All You Have To

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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In Dreams Begins Responsiblities.

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Things May Look Different To You Than They Did Before. I've Had That Experience Myself. But Don't Let Appearances Fool You. There's Only One Reality.

Not Everything Was Lost In The Flow Of Time

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No Matter How Much Suffering You Went Through, You Never Wanted To Let Go Of Those Memories.

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An Unhealthy Soul Requires A Healthy Body.

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"i Guess I've Been Waiting So Long I'm Looking For Perfection. That Makes It Tough." "waiting For Perfect Love?" "no, Even I Know Better Than That. I'm Looking For Selfishness. Like, Say I Tell You I Want To Eat Strawberry Shortcake. And You Stop Everything You're Doing And Run Out And Buy It For Me. And You Come Back Out Of Breath And Get Down On Your Knees And Hold This Strawberry Shortcake Out To Me. And I Say I Don't Want It Anymore And Throw It Out The Window. That's What I'm Looking For."

I Have No Idea! I Have Been Writing For 35 Years And From The Beginning Up To Now The Situation's Almost The Same. I'm Kind Of An Ugly Duckling. Always The Duckling, Never The Swan.

Someone Who Can Search For Something Is Happy. Searching Gives A Meaning To Life. Nowadays It’s Not So Easy To Find Something You Might Be Looking For. The Most Important Thing, However, Is The Search Itself, The Way You Take. It’s Not So Important Where It Leads. That’s Why My Characters Are Always Looking For Something, Maybe Only A Cat, A Sheep Or A Wife, But That Is At Least The Beginning Of A Story.

Everybody Thinks I'm This Delicate Little Girl. But You Can't Tell A Book By It's Cover.' To Which She Added A Momentary Smile.

What The World Needs Is A Set Villain That People Can Point At And Say, “it’s All Your Fault!

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.

When I First Met You, I Felt A Kind Of Contradiction In You. You’re Seeking Something, But At The Same Time, You Are Running Away For All You’re Worth.

Even So, There Were Times I Saw Freshness And Beauty. I Could Smell The Air, And I Really Loved Rock 'n' Roll. Tears Were Warm, And Girls Were Beautiful, Like Dreams. I Liked Movie Theaters, The Darkness And Intimacy, And I Liked The Deep, Sad Summer Nights.

People Lose Fifty Million Skin Cells Every Day. The Cells Get Scraped Off And Turn Into Invisible Dust, And Disappear Into The Air. Maybe We Are Nothing But Skin Cells As Far As The World Is Concerned.

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

A Life Without Pain: It Was The Very Thing I Had Dreamed Of For Years, But Now That I Had It, I Couldn’t Find A Place For Myself Within It. A Clear Gap Separated Me From It, And This Caused Me Great Confusion. I Felt As If I Were Not Anchored To This World - This World That I Had Hated So Passionately Until Then; This World That I Had Continued To Revile For Its Unfairness And Injustice; This World Where At Least I Knew Who I Was. Now The World Ceased To Be The World, And I Had Ceased To Be Me.

You're Afraid Of Imagination And Even More Afraid Of Dreams. Afraid Of The Resposibility That Begins In Dreams. But You Have To Sleep And Dreams Are A Part Of Sleep. When You're Awake You Can Suppress Imagination But You Can't Supress Dreams.

Our Memory Is Made Up Of Our Individual Memories And Our Collective Memories. The Two Are Intimately Linked. And History Is Our Collective Memory. If Our Collective Memory Is Taken From Us - Is Rewritten - We Lose The Ability To Sustain Our True Selves.

Sometimes I Feel So- I Don’t Know - Lonely. The Kind Of Helpless Feeling When Everything You’re Used To Has Been Ripped Away. Like There’s No More Gravity, And I’m Left To Drift In Outer Space With No Idea Where I’m Going’ Like A Little Lost Sputnik?’ I Guess So.

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

After All This, I Won't Start To Hate You.

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

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.

Anyone Who Falls In Love Is Searching For The Missing Pieces Of Themselves. So Anyone Who's In Love Gets Sad When They Think Of Their Lover. It's Like Stepping Back Inside A Room You Have Fond Memories Of, One You Haven't Seen In A Long Time.

I Just Feel Pain. A Lot Of Pain. I Thought I Could Imagine How Much This Would Hurt But I Was Wrong.

Perhaps Most People In The World Aren’t Trying To Be Free, Kafka. They Just Think They Are. It’s All An Illusion. If They Really Were Set Free, Most People Would Be In A Real Pickle. You’d Better Remember That. People Actually Prefer Not Being Free?

Whenever She Felt Like Crying, She Would Instead Become Angry—at Someone Else Or At Herself—which Meant That It Was Rare For Her To Shed Tears.

Angry At Someone

You Might Think You Made A New World Or A New Self, But Your Old Self Is Always Gonna Be There, Just Below The Surface, And If Something Happens, It'll Stick Its Head Out And Say 'hi.' You Don't Seem To Realize That. You Were Made Somewhere Else.

A Person’s Destiny Is Something You Look Back At Afterwards, Not Something To Be Known In Advance.

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

I'm Going To Take You Out Of Here ... I'm Going To Take You Home, To The World Where You Belong, Where Cats With Bent Tails Live, And There Are Little Backyards, And Alarm Clocks Ring In The Morning.

Don't Feel Sorry For Yourself. Only Arseholes Do That.

Until The Bitter End, The Emptiness Inside Her Was Hers Alone.

You're Walking Through A Field All By Yourself One Day In Spring And This Sweet Little Bear Cub With Velvet Fur And Shiny Little Eyes Comes Walking Along. And He Says To You, 'hi, There, Little Lady. Want To Tumble With Me?' So You And The Bear Spend The Whole Day In Each Other's Arms, Tumbling Down This Clover-covered Hill. Nice, Huh?

Instead Of Things I'm Good At, It Might Be Faster To List The Things I Can't Do. I Can't Cook Or Clean The House. My Room's A Mess, And I'm Always Losing Things. I Love Music, But I Can't Sing A Note. I'm Clumsy And Can Barely Sew A Stitch. My Sense Of Direction Is The Pits, And I Can't Tell Left From Right Half The Time. When I Get Angry, I Tend To Break Things. Plates And Pencils, Alarm Clocks. Later On I Regret It, But At The Time I Can't Help Myself. I Have No Money In The Bank. I'm Bashful For No Reason, And I Have Hardly Any Friends To Speak Of.

A Strange, Terrific Force Unlike Anything I've Ever Experienced Is Sprouting In My Heart, Taking Root There, Growing. Shut Up Behind My Rib Cage, My Warm Heart Expands And Contracts Independent Of My Will--over And Over.

I Don't Really Know If It's The Right Thing To Do, Making New Life. Kids Grow Up, Generations Take Their Place. What Does It All Come To? More Hills Bulldozed And More Ocean Fronts Filled In? Faster Cars And More Cats Run Over? Who Needs It?

When I Start To Write, I Don't Have Any Plan At All. I Just Wait For The Story To Come.

The Young Man Knows That He Is Irretrievably Lost. This Is No Town Of Cats, He Finally Realizes. It Is The Place Where He Is Meant To Be Lost. It Is Another World, Which Has Been Prepared Especially For Him. And Never Again, For All Eternity, Will The Train Stop At This Station To Take Him Back To The World He Came From.

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.

To Sleep With A Woman: It Can Seem Of The Utmost Importance In Your Mind, Or Then Again It Can Seem Like Nothing Much At All. Which Only Goes To Say That There's Sex As Therapy (self-therapy, That Is) And There's Sex As Pastime.

Possibilities Are Like Cancer. The More I Think About Them, The More They Multiply, And There's No Way To Stop Them. I'm Out Of Control.

When I Am Writing, I Do Not Distinguish Between The Natural And Supernatural. Everything Seems Real. That Is My World, You Could Say.

If, As The Dowager Had Said, We Are Nothing But Gene Carriers, Why Do So Many Of Us Have To Lead Such Strangely Shaped Lives? Wouldn't Our Genetic Purpose-to Transmit Dna-be Served Just As Well If We Lived Simple Lives, Not Bothering Our Heads With A Lot Of Extraneous Thoughts, Devoted Entirely To Preserving Life And Procreating? Did It Benefit The Genes In Any Way For Us To Lead Such Intricately Warped, Even Bizarre, Lives?

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