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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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As If To Build

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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I'm A Coward When It Comes To Matters Of The Heart. That Is My Fatal Flaw.

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

I Could Disappear From The Face Of The Earth, And The World Would Go On Moving Without The Slightest Twinge. Things Were Tremendously Complicated, To Be Sure, But One Thing Was Clear: No One Needed Me.

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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.

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

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

Her Voice Was Like A Line From An Old Black-and-white Jean-luc Godard Movie, Filtering In Just Beyond The Frame Of My Consciousness.

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I Found A Bill Evans Record In The Bookcase And Was Listening To It While Drying My Hair When I Realized That It Was The Record I Had Played In Naoko's Room On The Night Of Her Birthday, The Night She Cried And I Took Her In My Arms. That Had Happened Only Six Months Earlier, But It Felt Like Something From A Much Remoter Past. Maybe It Felt That Way Because I Had Thought About It So Often-too Often, To The Point Where It Had Distorted My Sense Of Time.

You Know What Girls Are Like. They Turn Twenty Or Twenty-one And All Of A Sudden They Start Having These Concrete Ideas. They Get Super Realistic. And When That Happens, Everything That Seemed So Sweet And Lovable About Them Begins To Look Ordinary And Depressing.

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What We Seek Is Some Kind Of Compensation For What We Put Up With.

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Adults Constantly Raise The Bar On Smart Children, Precisely Because They're Able To Handle It. The Children Get Overwhelmed By The Tasks In Front Of Them And Gradually Lose The Sort Of Openness And Sense Of Accomplishment They Innately Have. When They're Treated Like That, Children Start To Crawl Inside A Shell And Keep Everything Inside. It Takes A Lot Of Time And Effort To Get Them To Open Up Again. Kids' Hearts Are Malleable, But Once They Gel It's Hard To Get Them Back The Way They Were.

You Are A Beautiful Person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But You Seem Always To Be Dragging Your Heart Along The Ground. From Now On, Little By Little, You Must Prepare Yourself To Face Death. If You Devote All Of Your Future Energy To Living, You Will Not Be Able To Die Well. You Must Begin To Shift Gears, A Little At A Time. Living And Dying Are, In A Sense, Of Equal Value.

So This Was How Secrets Got Started, I Thought To Myself. People Constructed Them Little By Little. I Had Not Consciously Intended To Keep May Kasahara A Secret From Kumiko. My Relationship With Her Was Not That Big A Deal: Whether I Mentioned It Or Not Was Of No Consequence. Once It Had Flown Down A Certain Delicate Channel, However, It Had Become Cloaked In The Opacity Of Secretiveness, Whatever My Original Intention Had Have Been.

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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.

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In Traveling, A Companion, In Life, Compassion,'" She Repeats, Making Sure Of It. If She Had Paper And Pencil, It Wouldn't Surprise Me If She Wrote It Down. "so What Does That Really Mean? In Simple Terms." I Think It Over. It Takes Me A While To Gather My Thoughts, But She Waits Patiently. "i Think It Means," I Say, "that Chance Encounters Are What Keep Us Going. In Simple Terms.

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If Writing Novels Is Like Planting A Forest, Then Writing Short Stories Is More Like Planting A Garden.

You're Not A Kid Any More. You Have The Right To Choose Your Own Life. You Can Start Again. If You Want A Cat, All You Have To Do Is Choose A Life In Which You Can Have A Cat. It's Simple. It's Your Right.

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.

But Even So, Every Now And Then I Would Feel A Violent Stab Of Loneliness. The Very Water I Drink, The Very Air I Breathe, Would Feel Like Long, Sharp Needles. The Pages Of A Book In My Hands Would Take On The Threatening Metallic Gleam Of Razor Blades. I Could Hear The Roots Of Loneliness Creeping Through Me When The World Was Hushed At Four O'clock In The Morning.

Colours Shone With Exceptional Clarity In The Rain. The Ground Was A Deep Black, The Pine Branches A Brilliant Green, The People Wrapped In Yellow Looking Like Special Spirits That Were Allowed To Wander Over The Earth On Rainy Mornings Only.

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

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I Didn't Have Much To Say To Anybody But Kept To Myself And My Books. With My Eyes Closed, I Would Touch A Familiar Book And Draw It's Fragrance Deep Inside Me. This Was Enough To Make Me Happy.

In Traveling, A Companion, In Life, Compassion.

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All Of Us Are Imperfect Human Beings Living In An Imperfect World.

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Find Me Now. Before Someone Else Does.

Please Remember: Things Are Not What They Seem.

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...most People In The World Don't Really Use Their Brains To Think. And People Who Don't Think Are The Ones Who Don't Listen To Others.

And, Well, Mine Are Kind Of On The Heavy Side Anyway. The First Day Or Two, I Don't Want To Do Anything. Make Sure You Keep Away From Me Then.' I'd Like To, But How Can I Tell?' I Asked. O.k., I'll Wear A Hat For A Couple Of Days After My Period Starts. A Red One. That Should Work,' She Said With A Laugh. 'if You See Me On The Street And I'm Wearing A Red Hat, Don't Talk To Me, Just Run Away.

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Your Work Should Be An Act Of Love, Not A Marriage Of Convenience.

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

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It's Like A Kid Standing At The Window Watching The Rain.

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

Beyond The Edge Of The World There’s A Space Where Emptiness And Substance Neatly Overlap, Where Past And Future Form A Continuous, Endless Loop. And, Hovering About, There Are Signs No One Has Ever Read, Chords No One Has Ever Heard.

..finally He Was Just Another Ant, Working And Working Until He Died Without Meaning.

Silence, I Discover, Is Something You Can Actually Hear.

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When It's Raining Like This," Said Naoko, "it Feels As If We're The Only Ones In The World. I Wish It Would Just Keep Raining So The Three Of Us Could Stay Together.

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?

I Don't Go Out Of My Way To Make Friends, That's All.

Memory Is So Crazy! It's Like We've Got These Drawers Crammed With Tons Of Useless Stuff. Meanwhile, All The Really Important Things We Just Keep Forgetting, One After The Other.

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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.

Things Can Be Seen Better In The Darkness," He Said, As If He Had Just Seen Into Her Mind. "but The Longer You Spend In The Dark, The Harder It Becomes To Return To The World Aboveground Where The Light Is

My Peak? Would I Even Have One? I Hardly Had Had Anything You Could Call A Life. A Few Ripples, Some Rises And Falls. But That's It. Almost Nothing. Nothing Born Of Nothing. I'd Loved And Been Loved, But I Had Nothing To Show. It Was A Singularly Plain, Featureless Landscape. I Felt Like I Was In A Video Game. A Surrogate Pacman, Crunching Blindly Through A Labyrinth Of Dotted Lines. The Only Certainty Was My Death.

Whether It's Good For Anything Or Not, Cool Or Totally Uncool, In The Final Analysis What's Most Important Is What You Can't See But Can Feel In Your Heart.

I Happen To Like The Strange Ones. People Who Look Normal And Leads Normal Lives - They're The Ones You Have To Watch Out For.

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

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.

It's Just Like Sex; When [a Book Is] Finished, It's Finished.

I Don't Think Jealousy Has Much Of A Connection With Real, Objective Conditions. Like If You're Fortunate You're Not Jealous, But If Life Hasn't Blessed You, You Are Jealous. Jealousy Doesn't Work That Way. It's More Like A Tumor Secretly Growing Inside Us That Gets Bigger And Bigger, Beyond All Reason. Even If You Find Out It's There, There's Nothing You Can Do To Stop It.

Never Let The Darkness Or Negativity Outside Affect Your Inner Self. Just Wait Until Morning Comes And The Bright Light Will Drown Out The Darkness.

Like Flowers Scattered In A Storm, A Man's Life Is A Long Farewell.

When It's All Over, It'll Seem Like A Dream.

Whatever It Is You're Seeking Won't Come In The Form You're Expecting.

Why Do I Act Like This, Agreeing When I Really Disagree, Letting People Force Me To Do Things I Don't Want To Do?

I'm Often Asked What I Think About As I Run. Usually The People Who Ask This Have Never Run Long Distances Themselves. I Always Ponder The Question. What Exactly Do I Think About When I'm Running? I Don't Have A Clue.

It Takes Years To Build Up, It Takes Moments To Destroy.

I Began To Draw An Invisible Boundary Between Myself And Other People. No Matter Who I Was Dealing With. I Maintained A Set Distance, Carefully Monitoring The Person’s Attitude So That They Wouldn’t Get Any Closer. I Didn’t Easily Swallow What Other People Told Me. My Only Passions Were Books And Music

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I Don't Know, There's Something About You. Say There's An Hourglass: The Sand's About To Run Out. Someone Like You Can Always Be Counted On To Turn The Thing Over.

But Knowing What I Don’t Want To Do Doesn’t Help Me Figure Out What I Do Want To Do. I Could Do Just About Anything If Somebody Made Me. But I Don’t Have An Image Of The One Thing I Really Want To Do. That’s My Problem Now. I Can’t Find The Image.

Everything Has Boundaries. The Same Holds True With Thought. You Shouldn't Fear Boundaries, But You Also Should Not Be Afraid Of Destroying Them. That's What Is Most Important If You Want To Be Free: Respect For And Exasperation With Boundaries. What's Really Important In Life Is Always The Things That Are Secondary.

People Fall In Love Without Reason, Without Even Wanting To. You Can't Predict It. That's Love.

Falling In Love

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

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Memories And Thoughts Age, Just As People Do. But Certain Thoughts Can Never Age, And Certain Memories Can Never Fade.

If You Miss The Bus, Miss The Train, You’d Be Left Behind. So Everyone Says, Let’s Get On The Train, Let’s Get On The Bus And Go Faster And Get Rich... I Just Didn’t Like That Kind Of Lifestyle. I Love To Read Books, To Listen To Music.

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Maybe The Star Doesnt Even Exist Any More.yet Sometimes That Light Seems More Real To Me Than Anything.

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Have You Ever Had That Feeling—that You’d Like To Go To A Whole Different Place And Become A Whole Different Self?

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I Would Stare At The Grains Of Light Suspended In That Silent Space, Struggling To See Into My Own Heart. What Did I Want? And What Did Others Want From Me? But I Could Never Find The Answers. Sometimes I Would Reach Out And Try To Grasp The Grains Of Light, But My Fingers Touched Nothing.

In Most Cases Learning Something Essential In Life Requires Physical Pain.

If I'm Going To Merely Ramble, Maybe I Should Just Snuggle Under The Warm Covers, Think Of Miu, And Play With Myself.

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

I Get Up Early In The Morning, 4 O'clock, And I Sit At My Desk And What I Do Is Just Dream. After Three Or Four Hours, That's Enough. In The Afternoon, I Run.

You Are 27 Or 28 Right? It Is Very Tough To Live At That Age. When Nothing Is Sure. I Have Sympathy With You.

"i Believe You," She Whispers After A Moment. "please Find My Mind."

My Father Always Told Me: 'give Somebody A Hand And He'll Take An Arm.

My Biggest Faults Is That The Faults I Was Born With Grow Bigger Each Year. It's Like I Was Raising Chickens Inside Me. The Chickens Lay Eggs And The Eggs Hatch Into Other Chickens, Which Then Lay Eggs. Is This Any Way To Live A Life? What With All These Faults I've Got Going, I Have To Wonder. Sure, I Get By. But In The End, That's Not The Question, Is It?

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Nights Without Work I Spend With Whisky And Books.

If You Think Of Someone Enough, You’re Sure To Meet Them Again.

All I Do Is Keep On Running In My Own Cozy, Homemade Void, My Own Nostalgic Silence. And This Is A Pretty Wonderful Thing. No Matter What Anybody Else Says.

There's An Essential Order You Have To Follow In Everything. It's A Way Of Showing Respect, Following Everything In The Correct Order.

The Fresh Smell Of Coffee Soon Wafted Through The Apartment, The Smell That Separates Night From Day.

I Realize Now That The Reality Of Things Is Not Something You Convey To People But Something You Make.

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

It Was A Narrow World, A World That Was Standing Still. But The Narrower It Became, The More It Betook Of Stillness, The More This World That Enveloped Me Seemed To Overflow With Things And People That Could Only Be Called Strange. They Had Been There All The While, It Seemed, Waiting In The Shadows For Me To Stop Moving. And Every Time The Wind-up Bird Came To My Yard To Wind Its Spring, The World Descendedmore Deeply Into Chaos.

Even Castles In The Sky Can Do With A Fresh Coat Of Paint.

Is It Against The Law For Me To Know It?

Gays, Lesbians, Straights, Feminists, Fascist Pigs, Communists, Hare Krishnas - None Of Them Bother Me. I Don't Care What Banner They Raise. But What I Can't Stand Are Hollow People. When I'm With Them I Just Can't Bare It, And Wind Up Saying Things I Shouldn't.

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

Good Style Happens In One Of Two Ways: The Writer Either Has An Inborn Talent Or Is Willing To Work Herself To Death To Get It.

Don't You Think It Would Be Wonderful To Get Rid Of Everything And Everybody And Just Go Some Place Where You Don't Know A Soul?

[but] We Accept Irony Through A Device Called Metaphor. And Through That We Grow And Become Deeper Human Beings.

Let The World Move Along As It Pleased. If It Had Any Business With Him, It Would Be Sure To Tell Him.

The Better You Were Able To Imagine What You Wanted To Imagine, The Farther You Could Flee From Reality.

I Don't Know -- Maybe The World Has Two Different Kinds Of People, And For One Kind The World Is This Completely Logical, Rice Pudding Place, And For The Other It's All Hit-or-miss Macaroni Gratin.

Why?" She Screamed. "are You Crazy? You Know The English Subjunctive, You Understand Trigonometry, You Can Read Marx, And You Don't Know The Answer To Something As Simple As That? Why Do You Even Have To Ask? Why Do You Have To Make A Girl Say Something Like This? I Like You More Than I Like Him, That's All. I Wish I Had Fallen In Love With Somebody A Little More Handsome, Of Course. But I Didn't. I Fell In Love With You!

I'm A Very Ordinary Human Being; I Just Happen To Like Reading Books.

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.

That's How People Live In The Real World: Forcing Stuff On Each Other.

She Was Hearing Everything That Went On In His Heart, Like A Person Who Can Trace A Map With His Fingertip And Conjure Up Vivid, Living Scenery.

I Was Reduced To Pure Concept. My Flesh Had Dissolved; My Form Had Dissipated. I Floated In Space. Liberated Of My Corporeal Being, But Without Dispensation To Go Anywhere Else.i Was Adrift In The Void. Somewhere Across The Fine Line Separating Nightmare From Reality.

What I Want Is For The Two Of Us To Meet Somewhere By Chance One Day, Like, Passing On The Street, Or Getting On The Same Bus.

Hundreds Of Butterflies Flitted In And Out Of Sight Like Short-lived Punctuation Marks In A Stream Of Consciousness Without Beginning Or End.

Punctuation Marks

People Soon Get Tired Of Things That Aren't Boring, But Not Of What Is Boring.

This Is No Honky-tonk Parade. 1q84 Is The Real World, Where A Cut Draws Real Blood, Where Pain Is Real Pain And Fear Is Real Fear. The Moon In The Sky Is No Paper Moon.

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.

Nature Is Actually Unnatural

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.

I Was Feeling Lonely Without Her, But The Fact That I Could Feel Lonely At All Was Consolation. Loneliness Wasn't Such A Bad Feeling. It Was Like The Stillness Of The Pin Oak After The Little Birds Had Flown Off.

Our Faces Were No More Than Ten Inches Apart But She Was Lightyears Away From Me.

Not Just Beautiful, Though — The Stars Are Like The Trees In The Forest, Alive And Breathing. And They’re Watching Me. What I’ve Up Till Now, What I’m Going To Do — They Know It All. Nothing Gets Past Their Watchful Eyes. As I Sit There Under The Shining Night Sky, Again A Violent Fear Takes Hold Of Me. My Heart’s Pounding A Mile A Minute, And I Can Barely Breathe. All These Millions Of Stars Looking Down On Me, And I’ve Never Given Them More Than A Passing Thought Before. Not Just The Stars — How Many Other Things Haven’t I Noticed In The World, Things I Know Nothing About?

Whatever Can't Be Expressed Might As Well Not Exist.

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.

In This World, There Are Things You Can Only Do Alone, And Things You Can Only Do With Somebody Else. It's Important To Combine The Two In Just The Right Amount.

Crying Is Personal. On The Other Hand, Laughing Is More General . Laughing Makes Our Hearts Wider.

Friends Don't Need The Intervention Of A Third Party. Friendship's A Voluntary Thing.

I've Been Lonely For So Long. And I've Been Hurt So Deeply. If Only I Could Have Met You Again A Long Time Ago, Then I Wouldn't Have Had To Take All These Detours To Get Here.' Tengo Shook His Head. 'i Don't Think So. This Way Is Just Fine. This Is Exactly The Right Time. For Both Of Us. [...] We Needed That Much Time.... To Understand How Lonely We Really Were.

A Short Story I Have Written Long Ago Would Barge Into My House In The Middle Of The Night, Shake Me Awake And Shout, 'hey,this Is No Time For Sleeping! You Can't Forget Me, There's Still More To Write!' Impelled By That Voice, I Would Find Myself Writing A Novel. In This Sense, Too, My Short Stories And Novels Connect Inside Me In A Very Natural, Organic Way.

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.

Nobody's Going To Win All The Time. On The Highway Of Life You Can't Always Be In The Fast Lane.

You Can See A Person's Whole Life In The Cancer They Get.

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

Like You're Riding A Train At Night Across Some Vast Plain, And You Catch A Glimpse Of A Tiny Light In A Window Of A Farmhouse. In An Instant It's Sucked Back Into The Darkness Behind And Vanishes. But If You Close Your Eyes, That Point Of Light Stays With You, Just Barely For A Few Moments.

As I Already Explaned, I Don't Have Any Form. I'm A Conceptual Metaphysical Object.

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

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!

I Probably Still Haven’t Completely Adapted To The World. I Don’t Know, I Feel Like This Isn’t The Real World. The People, The Scene: They Just Don’t Seem Real To Me.

I'm Not Going To Get Involved In A Debate With You. Just Remember This: The Gods Give, And The Gods Take Away. Even If You Are Not Aware Of Having Been Granted What You Posses, The Gods Remember What They Gave You. They Don't Forget A Thing. You Should Use The Abilities You Have Been Granted With The Utmost Care.

What If I’ve Forgotten The Most Important Thing?

It's Hard To Tell The Difference Between Sea And Sky, Between Voyager And Sea. Between Reality And The Workings Of The Heart.

Sometimes I Feel Like A Caretaker Of A Museum -- A Huge, Empty Museum Where No One Ever Comes, And I'm Watching Over It For No One But Myself.

Each Of Us Possesses A Tangible Living Soul. The System Has No Such Thing. We Must Not Allow The System To Exploit Us.

Life Is Not Like Water. Things In Life Don't Necessarily Flow Over The Shortest Possible Route.

The Years Nineteen And Twenty Are A Crucial Stage In The Maturation Of Character, And If You Allow Yourself To Become Warped When You're That Age, It Will Cause You Pain When You're Older.

It Seemed To Me That This World Has A Serious Shortage Of Both Logic And Kindness.

Spend Your Money On The Things Money Can Buy. Spend Your Time On The Things Money Can’t Buy.

A Gentleman Is Someone Who Does Not What He Wants To Do, But What He Should Do.

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.

Time Passes Slowly. Nobody Says A Word, Everyone Lost In Quiet Reading. One Person Sits At A Desk Jotting Down Notes, But The Rest Are Sitting There Silently, Not Moving, Totally Absorbed. Just Like Me.

I'm A Writer, Not A Professional Runner. It's Fun And It Helps Me Write. I Need Powerful Concentration.

A Fortunate Author Can Write Maybe Twelve Novels In His Lifetime.

Adults Need More Complex Narratives. They Have Their Own Narratives. The Main Characters Are Themselves.

I Was In My House, Alone In The Living Room, Anxious About You, Watching The Flashes Of Lightning. And A Flash Of Lightning Lit Up This Truth For Me, Right In Front Of My Eye. That Night I Lost You, I Lost Something Inside Me. Or Perhaps Several Things. Something Central To My Existence, The Very Support For Who I Am As A Person

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.

All Over The World People Have Developed Their Own Ideas About What's Right And Wrong In Life, But So Long As You Aren't Harming Others Or The Earth, It's Your Choice When You Decide How You Want To Live Your Life - Yours And Yours Alone. Life's No Piece Of Cake, Mind You, But The Recipe's My Own To Fool With.

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