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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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I Think Memory Is

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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

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

Sex Is An Extremely Subtle Undertaking, Unlike Going To The Department Store On A Sunday To Buy A Thermos.

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I'm Not Afraid To Die. What I'm Afraid Of Is Having Reality Get The Better Of Me, Of Having Reality Leave Me Behind.

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

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.

If You Only Read The Books That Everyone Else Is Reading, You Can Only Think What Everyone Else Is Thinking.

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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.

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Memory Is Like Fiction; Or Else It's Fiction That's Like Memory.

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

Exhaustion Pays No Mind To Age Or Beauty. Like Rain And Earthquakes And Hail And Floods.

Learning Another Language Is Like Becoming Another Person.

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

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 Lost Some Of My Friends Because I Got So Famous, People Who Just Assumed That I Would Be Different Now. I Felt Like Everyone Hated Me. That Is The Most Unhappy Time Of My Life.

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.

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

Tell Me, Doctor, Are You Afraid Of Death?" "i Guess It Depends On How You Die.

Afraid Of Death

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?

Was It Aristotle Who Said The Human Soul Is Composed Of Reason, Will, And Desire?” “no, That Was Plato. Aristotle And Plato Were As Different As Mel Tormé And Bing Crosby. In Any Case, Things Were A Lot Simpler In The Old Days,” Komatsu Said. “wouldn’t It Be Fun To Imagine Reason, Will, And Desire Engaged In A Fierce Debate Around A Table?

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Pointless Thinking Is Worse Than No Thinking At All.

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.

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There Are Many Things We Only See Clearly In Retrospect.

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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.

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

Since I'm A Novelist I'm The Opposite Of You - I Believe That What's Most Important Is What Cannot Be Measured. I'm Not Denying Your Way Of Thinking, But The Greater Part Of People's Lives Consist Of Things That Are Unmeasurable, And Trying To Change All These To Something Measurable Is Realistically Impossible.

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

Love With Complications. Scenery Was The Last Thing On My Mind.

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

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

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.

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You Make Do With What You Have. As You Age You Learn Even To Be Happy With What You Have.

It Is Sometimes Necessary For Each Person. Fill Up With Delicious Food, Get Drunk, Sing Loudly And Chat Frivolously.

Being Active Every Day Makes It Easier To Hear That Inner Voice.

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

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

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.

My Shadow Is Only Half Of What It Should Be." "everyone Has Their Shortcomings.

Only Where There Is Disillusionment And Depression And Sorrow Does Happiness Arise; Without The Despair Of Loss, There Is No Hope.

The Passage Of Time Will Usually Extract The Venom Of Most Things And Render Them Harmless

Passage Of Time

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

...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.

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.

Overhead, The Two Moons Worked Together To Bathe The World In A Strange Light.

Will You Wait For Me Forever?

Letters Are Just Pieces Of Paper," I Said. "burn Them, And What Stays In Your Heart Will Stay; Keep Them, And What Vanishes Will Vanish.

Mediocrity's Like A Spot On A Shirt—it Never Comes Off.

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.

A Certain Something, He Felt, Had Managed To Work Its Way In Through A Tiny Opening And Was Trying To Fill A Blank Space Inside Him. The Void Was Not One That She Had Made. It Had Always Been There Inside Him. She Had Merely Managed To Shine A Special Light On It.

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.

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The Most Important Thing We Learn At School Is The Fact That The Most Important Things Can't Be Learned At School.

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Sometimes, However, This Sense Of Isolation, Like Acid Spilling Out Of A Bottle, Can Unconsciously Eat Away At A Person’s Heart And Dissolve It.

Life Is A Lot More Fragile Than We Think. So You Should Treat Others In A Way That Leaves No Regrets. Fairly, And If Possible, Sincerely.

The Most Dangerous Creature Here Would Have To Be Me. So Maybe I'm Just Scared Of My Own Shadow.

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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.

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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.

He Sometimes Wondered If She Had Become Involved With Him Just So That She Could Cry In Someone's Arms. Maybe She Can't Cry Alone, And That's Why She Needs Me.

We Heard No Other Sounds. We Met No Other People. We Saw Only Two Bright Red Birds Leap Startled From The Center Of The Meadow And Dart Into The Woods.

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I Often Dream About The Dolphin Hotel.

Now For A Good Twelve-hour Sleep, I Told Myself. Twelve Solid Hours. Let Birds Sing, Let People Go To Work. Somewhere Out There, A Volcano Might Blow, Israeli Commandos Might Decimate A Palestinian Village. I Couldn't Stop It. I Was Going To Sleep.

The Thing I’m Most Afraid Of Is Me. Of Not Knowing What I’m Going To Do. Of Not Knowing What I’m Doing Right Now

Sometimes We Don't Need Words. Rather, It's Words That Need Us.

Every One Of Us Is Losing Something Precious To Us. Lost Opportunities, Lost Possibilities, Feelings We Can Never Get Back Again. That’s Part Of What It Means To Be Alive.

Life Is Like A Box Of Cookies.

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At Least He Never Walked.

Among The Many Values In Life, I Appreciate Freedom Most.

Everything Was Too Sharp And Clear, So That I Could Never Tell Where To Start- The Way A Map That Shows Too Much Can Sometimes Be Useless.

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

She Lived Frugally, But Her Meals Were The Only Things On Which She Deliberately Spent Her Money. She Never Compromised On The Quality Of Her Groceries, And Drank Only Good-quality Wines.

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

I Myself Have Been On My Own And Utterly Independent Since I Graduated. I Haven't Belonged To Any Company Or Any System. It Isn't Easy To Live Like This In Japan.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

You Have To Be Practical. So Every Time I Say, If You Want To Write A Novel You Have To Be Practical, People Get Bored. They Are Disappointed. They Are Expecting A More Dynamic, Creative, Artistic Thing To Say. What I Want To Say Is: You Have To Be Practical.

Not Everything Was Lost In The Flow Of Time

When I Open Them, Most Of The Books Have The Smell Of An Earlier Time Leaking Out Between The Pages - A Special Odor Of The Knowledge And Emotions That For Ages Have Been Calmly Resting Between The Covers. Breathing It In, I Glance Through A Few Pages Before Returning Each Book To Its Shelf.

Nobody Likes Being Alone That Much. I Don't Go Out Of My Way To Make Friends, That's All. It Just Leads To Disappointment.

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

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.

Black And White

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.

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.

I Keep To This Routine Every Day Without Variation. The Repetition Itself Becomes The Important Thing; It's A Form Of Mesmerism. I Mesmerize Myself To Reach A Deeper State Of Mind.

The Pillow Smells Like The Sunlight, A Precious Smell.

Unclose Your Mind. You Are Not A Prisoner. You Are A Bird In Flight, Searching The Skies For Dreams.

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

Was The Earth Put Here Just To Nourish Human Loneliness?

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.

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.

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

Time Moves In It Special Way In The Middle Of The Night.

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

Then I Noticed That My Shadow Was Crying Too, Shedding Clear, Sharp Shadow Tears. Have You Ever Seen The Shadows Of Tears, Mr. Wind-up Bird? They’re Nothing Like Ordinary Shadows. Nothing At All. They Come Here From Some Other, Distant World, Especially For Our Hearts. Or Maybe Not. It Struck Me Then That The Tears My Shadow Was Shedding Might Be The Real Thing, And The Tears That I Was Shedding Were Just Shadows. You Don’t Get It, I’m Sure, Mr. Wind-up Bird. When A Naked Seventeen-year-old Girl Is Shedding Tears In The Moonlight, Anything Can Happen. It’s True.

I Wasn't Particularly Afraid Of Death Itself. As Shakespeare Said, Die This Year And You Don't Have To Die The Next.

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

I Closed My Eyes And Listened Carefully For The Descendants Of Sputnik, Even Now Circling The Earth, Gravity Their Only Tie To The Planet. Lonely Metal Souls In The Unimpeded Darkness Of Space, They Meet, Pass Each Other, And Part, Never To Meet Again. No Words Passing Between Them. No Promises To Keep.

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

Taking Responsibility

There Is Nothing In This World That Never Takes A Step Outside A Person's Heart.

What If I’ve Forgotten The Most Important Thing?

In A Sense, I'm The One Who Ruined Me: I Did It Myself.

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.

Concentration Is One Of The Happiest Things In My Life.

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

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

What Do You Think? I'm Not A Starfish Or A Pepper Tree. I'm A Living, Breathing Human Being. Of Course I've Been In Love.

The Dead Will Always Be Dead, But We Have To Go On Living.

In My Younger Days, I Was Trying To Write Sophisticated Prose And Fantastic Stories.

Let Me Tell You Something, Mari. The Ground We Stand On Looks Solid Enough, But If Something Happens It Can Drop Right Out From Under You. And Once That Happens, You've Had It: Things'll Never Be The Same. All You Can Do Is Go On, Living Alone Down There In The Darkness.

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

The World Is An Inherently Unfair Place.

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

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

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.

Passion Can’t Sustain Itself Forever.

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

The Unwaking World Was As Hushed As A Deep Forest.

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

Listen Up—there’s No War That Will End All Wars,’ Crow Tells Me. ‘war Breeds War. Lapping Up The Blood Shed By Violence, Feeding On Wounded Flesh. War Is A Perfect, Self-contained Being. You Need To Know That.

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

I Am A Flawed Human Being - A Far More Flawed Human Being Than You Realize.

Probably." "again With The Probablys." "a World Full Of Probablys," She Said.

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.

I Want You Always To Remember Me. Will You Remember That I Existed, And That I Stood Next To You Here Like This?

I Am Here, Alone, At The End Of The World. I Reach Out And Touch Nothing.”.

End Of The World

It’s Pretty Thin, The Wall Separating Healthy Confidence And Unhealthy Pride.

Your Heart Is Like A Great River After A Long Spell Of Rain, Spilling Over Its Banks. All Signposts That Once Stood On The Ground Are Gone, Inundated And Carried Away By That Rush Of Water. And Still The Rain Beats Down On The Surface Of The River. Every Time You See A Flood Like That On The News You Tell Yourself: That’s It. That’s My Heart.

These Days I Just Can't Seem To Say What I Mean [...]. I Just Can't. Every Time I Try To Say Something, It Misses The Point. Either That Or I End Up Saying The Opposite Of What I Mean. The More I Try To Get It Right The More Mixed Up It Gets. Sometimes I Can't Even Remember What I Was Trying To Say In The First Place. It's Like My Body's Split In Two And One Of Me Is Chasing The Other Me Around A Big Pillar. We're Running Circles Around It. The Other Me Has The Right Words, But I Can Never Catch Her.

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