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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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I Have Come To

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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He Felt As If His Heart Had Dried Up. I Needed Her He Thought. I Needed Someone Like Her To Fill The Void Inside Me. But I Wasn’t Able To Fill The Void Inside Her. Until The Bitter End, The Emptiness Inside Her Was Hers Alone.

I Never Plan. I Never Know What The Next Page Is Going To Be..... But That's The Fun Of Writing A Novel Or A Story, Because I Don't Know What's Going To Happen Next.

If You're In Pitch Blackness, All You Can Do Is Sit Tight Until Your Eyes Get Used To The Dark.

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But This Thing, Whatever It Was, This Mistlike Something, Hung There Inside My Body Like A Certain Kind Of Potential. I Wanted To Give It A Name, But The Word Refused To Come To Mind. I’m Terrible At Finding The Right Words For Things. I’m Sure Tolstoy Would Have Been Able To Come Up With Exactly The Right Word

Spending Plenty Of Time On Something Can Be The Most Sophisticated Form Of Revenge.

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.

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.

Things Pass Us By. Nobody Can Catch Them. That's The Way We Live Our Lives.

It's Like The Tibetan Wheel Of The Passions. As The Wheel Turns, The Values And Feelings On The Outer Rim Rise And Fall, Shining Or Sinking Into Darkness. But True Love Stays Fastened To The Axle And Doesn't Move.

Has The Dark Shadow Really Disappeared? Or Is It Inside Me, Concealed, Waiting For Its Chance To Reappear? Like A Clever Thief Hidden Inside A House, Breathing Quietly, Waiting Until Everyone’s Asleep. I Have Looked Deep Inside Myself, Trying To Detect Something That Might Be There. But Just As Our Consciousness Is A Maze, So Too Is Our Body. Everywhere You Turn There’s Darkness, And A Blind Spot. Everywhere You Find Silent Hints, Everywhere A Surprise Is Waiting For You.

You End Up Exhausted And Spent, But Later, In Retrospect, You Realize What It All Was For. The Parts Fall Into Place, And You Can See The Whole Picture And Finally Understand The Role Each Individual Part Plays. The Dawn Comes, The Sky Grows Light, And The Colors And Shapes Of The Roofs Of Houses, Which You Could Only Glimpse Vaguely Before, Come Into Focus.

You’re Here,” I Continued. “at Least You Look As If You’re Here. But Maybe You Aren’t. Maybe It’s Just Your Shadow. The Real You May Be Someplace Else. Or Maybe You Already Disappeared, A Long, Long Time Ago. I Reach Out My Hand To See, But You’ve Hidden Yourself Behind A Cloud Of Probablys. Do You Think We Can Go On Like This Forever?

It's Just A Feeling I Have. What You See With Your Eyes Is Not Necessarily Real. My Enemy Is, Among Other Things, The Me Inside Me.

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.

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

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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.

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

I Collect Records. And Cats. I Don't Have Any Cats Right Now. But If I'm Taking A Walk And I See A Cat, I'm Happy.

And As The Years Have Passed, The Time Has Grown Longer. The Sad Truth Is That What I Could Recall In Five Seconds All Too Needed Ten, Then Thirty, Then A Full Minute - Like Shadows Lengthening At Dusk. Someday, I Suppose, The Shadows Will Be Swallowed Up In Darkness.

If You Really Want To Know Something, You Have To Be Willing To Pay The Price.

In Order To Pin Down Reality As Realilty, We Need Another Reality To Relativize The First. Yet That Other Reality Requires A Third Reality To Serve As Its Grounding. An Endless Chain Is Created Within Our Consciousness, And It Is The Maintenance Of This Chain Which Produces The Sensation That We Are Actually Here, That We Ourselves Exist.

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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

Irrepressible Curiosity Vied With An Instinctive Fear.

When I Was Fifteen, All I Wanted Was To Go Off To Some Other World, A Place Beyond Anybody’s Reach. A Place Beyond The Flow Of Time.” - But There’s No Place Like That In This World. - Exactly. Which Is Why I’m Living Here, In This World Where Things Are Continually Damaged, Where The Heart Is Fickle, Where Time Flows Past Without A Break.

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

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Thanks To The Long Days Of Rain, The Blades Of Grass Glowed With A Deep-green Luster, And They Gave Off The Smell Of Wildness Unique To Things That Sink Their Roots Into The Earth.

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Which Is Why I Am Writing This Book. To Think. To Understand. It Just Happens To Be The Way I'm Made. I Have To Write Things Down To Feel I Fully Comprehend Them.

It Seems To Me That Very Sad Things Always Contain An Element Of The Comical

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

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You Know, They've Got These Chocolate Assortments, And You Like Some But You Don't Like Others? And You Eat All The Ones You Like, And The Only Ones Left Are The Ones You Don't Like As Much? I Always Think About That When Something Painful Comes Up. Now I Just Have To Polish These Off, And Everything'll Be Ok. Life Is A Box Of Chocolates. I Suppose You Could Call It A Philosophy.

In Traveling, A Companion, In Life, Compassion.

If I Stayed Here, Something Inside Me Would Be Lost Forever—something I Couldn't Afford To Lose. It Was Like A Vague Dream, A Burning, Unfulfilled Desire. The Kind Of Dream People Have Only When They're Seventeen.

Mere Humans Who Root Through Their Refrigerators At Three O'clock In The Morning Can Only Produce Writing That Matches What They Do. And That Includes Me.

You've Already Decided What You're Going To Do, And All That's Left Is To Set The Wheels In Motion. I Mean, It's Your Life. Basically, You Gotta Go With What You Think Is Right.

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

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

It's A Dark, Cool, Quiet Place. A Basement In Your Soul. And That Place Can Sometimes Be Dangerous To The Human Mind. I Can Open The Door And Enter That Darkness, But I Have To Be Very Careful. I Can Find My Story There. Then I Bring That Thing To The Surface, Into The Real World.

Of Course You Keep Telling Yourself There's Something To Be Learned From Everything, And Growing Old Shouldn't Be That Hard. That's The General Drift.

If You're Young And Talented, It's Like You Have Wings.

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

Say It Before You Run Out Of Time. Say It Before It's Too Late. Say What You're Feeling. Waiting Is A Mistake.

I Learned That Realism Can Come In All Shapes And Sizes. The World Is Big Enough For Different Values To Coexist.

Life Is Like A Box Of Cookies.

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

I Have Read All My Novels That Were Translated Into English. Reading My Novels Is Enjoyable Because I Forget Almost All The Content In Them.

No Matter How Long You Stand There Examining Yourself Naked Before A Mirror, You'll Never See Reflected What's Inside.

That's Good. I Was Worried. Of Course, I Do Have A Few Things Wrong With Me, But Those Are Strictly Problems I Keep Inside. I'd Hate To Think They Were Obvious To Anybody Else. Especially At The Swimming Pool In The Summer.

Don't Pointless Things Have A Place, Too, In This Far-from-perfect World?

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

In Long-distance Running The Only Opponent You Have To Beat Is Yourself, The Way You Used To Be.

You Can Hide Memories, But You Can’t Erase The History That Produced Them.

I Can't Understand Nothingness. I Can't Understand It And I Can't Imagine It.

I Think Most People Live In Fiction...that's How You Keep Your Fragile Body Intact.

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We Never Choose Anything At All. Things Happen. Or Not.

Everyone Just Keeps On Disappearing. Some Things Vanish, Like They Were Cut Away. Others Fade Slowly Into The Mist. And All That Remains Is A Desert.

With The Advent Of Winter, Her Eyes Seemed To Take On A Greater Transparency, A Transparency That Lead Nowhere. Occassionally, For No Particular Reason, Naoko Would Gaze Into My Eyes As If Searching For Something. Each Time I Was Filled With Odd Sensations Of Lonliness And Inadequecy.

For A Certain Kind Of Person, Love Begins From Something Tiny Or Silly. From Something Like That Or It Doesnt Begin At All.

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.

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Everything. Things You Lost. Things You’re Gonna Lose. Everything. Here’s Where It All Ties Together.

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

Maybe The Only Thing I Can Definitely Say About Is This: That’s Life. Maybe The Only Thing We Can Do Is Accept It, Without Really Knowing What’s Going On.

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?

The Sky Grew Darker, Painted Blue On Blue, One Stroke At A Time, Into Deeper And Deeper Shades Of Night.

Our Responsibility Begins With Our Imagination.

The Earth, Time, Concepts, Love, Life, Faith Justice, Evil - They're All Fluid And In Transition. They Don't Stay In One Form Or In One Place Forever. The Whole Universe Is Like Some Big Fedex Box.

Whenever I Look At The Ocean, I Always Want To Talk To People, But When I'm Talking To People, I Always Want To Look At The Ocean.

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.

...i've Just Been Feeling Insecure Since I Was 20, And That's All I've Been Trying To Express. Now The Entire World Is Feeling Insecure.

Understanding Is But The Sum Of Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

Life's No Piece Of Cake, Mind You, But The Recipe's My Own To Fool With.

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

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

I'm Not So Weird To Me.

There Are Ways Of Dying That Don't End In Funerals. Types Of Death You Can't Smell.

Sheep Hurt My Father, And Through My Father, Sheep Have Also Hurt Me.

I Didn't Feel Like I Was In My Own Body; My Body Was Just A Lonely, Temporary Container I Happened To Be Borrowing.

So I Made Up My Mind I Was Going To Find Someone Who Would Love Me Unconditionally Three Hundred And Sixty-five Days A Year. Watanabe: Wow, And Did Your Search Pay Off? M: That's The Hard Part. I Guess I've Been Waiting So Long I'm Looking For Perfection. That Makes It Tough.

If You Really Want To Know What's Happening Here And Now, You've Got To Use Your Own Eyes And Your Own Judgment.

Whenever An Occasion Arose In Which She Needed An Opinion On Something In The Wider World, She Borrowed Her Husband's. If This Had Been All There Was To Her, She Wouldn't Have Bothered Anyone, But As Is So Often The Case With Such Women, She Suffered From An Incurable Case Of Of Pretentiousness. Lacking Any Internalized Values Of Her Own, Such People Can Arrive At A Standpoint Only By Adopting Other People's Standards Or Views. The Only Principle That Governs Their Minds Is The Question "how Do I Look?

This Place Is Too Calm, Too Natural--too Complete. I Don't Deserve It. At Least Not Yet.

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.

But Metaphors Help Eliminate What Separates You And Me.

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

This Was Something Sure To Be Crammed Full Of Warm Secrets, Like An Antique Clock Built When Peace Filled The World.

We Were Young, And We Had No Need For Prophecies. Just Living Was Itself An Act Of Prophecy.

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

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

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

Reality Was Utterly Coolheaded And Utterly Lonely.

As Long As I Was Alive, I Was Something. That Was Just How It Was. But Somewhere Along The Way It All Changed. Living Turned Me Into Nothing.

The Silence Grew Deeper, So Deep That If You Listened Carefully You Might Very Well Catch The Sound Of The Earth Revolving On Its Axis.

Kumiko And I Felt Something For Each Other From The Beginning. It Was Not One Of Those Strong, Impulsive Feelings That Can Hit Two People Like An Electric Shock When They First Meet, But Something Quieter And Gentler, Like Two Tiny Lights Traveling In Tandem Through A Vast Darkness And Drawing Imperceptibly Closer To Each Other As They Go. As Our Meetings Grew More Frequent, I Felt Not So Much That I Had Met Someone New As That I Had Chanced Upon A Dear Old Friend.

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

It's Just That You're About To Do Something Out Of The Ordinary. And After You Do Something Like That, The Everyday Look Of Things Might Seem To Change A Little. Things May Look Different To You Than They Did Before. But Don't Let Appearances Fool You. There's Always Only One Reality.

Be Fearless, Be Brave, Be Bold, Love Yourself

Maybe She Thought The Garbage And Rocks In Your Head Were Interesting. But Finally, Garbage Is Garbage And Rocks Are Rocks.

What Gave Money Its True Meaning Was Its Dark-night Namelessness, Its Breathtaking Interchangeability.

Why Do People Have To Be This Lonely? What's The Point Of It All? Millions Of People In This World, All Of Them Yearning, Looking To Others To Satisfy Them, Yet Isolating Themselves. Why? Was The Earth Put Here Just To Nourish Human Loneliness?

He Appeared Before Me And Departed. We Were Not Able To Speak To Or Touch Each Other. But In That Short Interval, He Transformed Many Things Inside Me. He Literally Stirred My Mind And Body The Way A Spoon Stirs A Cup Of Cocoa, Down To The Depths Of My Internal Organs And My Womb.

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.

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.

We're All Kind Of Weird And Twisted And Drowning.

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.

Precipitate As Weather, She Appeared From Somewhere, Then Evaporated, Leaving Only Memory.

What Makes Us The Most Normal," Said Reiko, "is Knowing That We're Not Normal.

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.

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.

Hey, What Is It With You? Why Are You So Spaced Out? You Still Haven't Answered Me." I Probably Still Haven't Completely Adapted To The World," I Said After Giving It Some Thought. "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." Midori Rested An Elbow On The Bar And Looked At Me. "there Was Something Like That In A Jim Morrison Song, I'm Pretty Sure." People Are Strange When You're A Stranger.

I Can't Build A Simple Shelf. I Have No Idea How To Change An Oil Filter On A Car. I Can't Even Stick A Stamp On An Envelope Straight. And I'm Always Dialling The Wrong Number. But I Have Come Up With A Few Original Cocktails That People Seem To Like.

How Much Do You Love Me?' Midori Asked. 'enough To Melt All The Tigers In The World To Butter,' I Said.

Someone Once Said That Nothing Costs More And Yields Less Benefit Than Revenge,” Aomame Said. “winston Churchill. As I Recall It, Though, He Was Making Excuses For The British Empire’s Budget Deficits. It Has No Moral Significance.

She's Letting Out Her Feelings. The Scary Thing Is Not Being Able To Do That. When Your Feelings Build Up And Harden And Die Inside, Then You're In Big Trouble.

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

Where I Went In My Travels, It's Impossible For Me To Recall. I Remember The Sights And Sounds And Smells Clearly Enough, But The Names Of The Towns Are Gone, As Well As Any Sense Of The Order In Which I Traveled From Place To Place.

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.

Those Were Strange Days, Now That I Look Back At Them. In The Midst Of Life, Everything Revolved Around Death.

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

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

Kindness And A Caring Mind Are Two Separate Qualities. Kindness Is Manners. It Is Superficial Custom, An Acquired Practice. Not So The Mind. The Mind Is Deeper, Stronger, And, I Believe, It Is Far More Inconstant.

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.

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

Imperfect World

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

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.

With Luck, It Might Even Snow For Us.

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.

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

I Was Thirty-seven Then, Strapped In My Seat As The Huge 747 Plunged Through Dense Cloud Cover On Approach To The Hamburg Airport.

It's Like Tolstoy Said. Happiness Is An Allegory, Unhappiness A Story.

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.

In The End, Like So Many Beautiful Promises In Our Lives, That Dinner Date Never Came To Be.

I Am Worrying About My Country. I Feel I Have A Responsibility As A Novelist To Do Something.

Kids' Hearts Are Malleable, But Once They Gel It's Hard To Get Them Back The Way They Were.

Have Your Dream...what You Need Now More Than Anything Is Discipline. Cast Off Mere Words. Words Turn Into Stone. (from Thailand)

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