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It Feels Like Everything's Been Decided In Advance That I'm Following A Path Somebody Else Has Already Mapped Out For Me. It Doesn't Matter How Much I Think Things Over, How Much Effort I Put Into It. In Fact, The Harder I Try, The More I Lose My Sense Of Who I Am. It's Like My Identity's An Orbit That I've Strayed Far Away From, And That Really Hurts. But More Than That, It Scares Me. Just Thinking About It Makes Me Flinch.

-Haruki Murakami

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It Feels Like Everything's

Haruki Murakami

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It Feels Like Everything's Been Decided In Advance That I'm Following A Path Somebody Else Has Already Mapped Out For Me. It Doesn't Matter How Much I Think Things Over, How Much Effort I Put Into It. In Fact, The Harder I Try, The More I Lose My Sense Of Who I Am. It's Like My Identity's An Orbit That I've Strayed Far Away From, And That Really Hurts. But More Than That, It Scares Me. Just Thinking About It Makes Me Flinch.

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Listening To The Music While Stretching Her Body Close To Its Limit, She Was Able To Attain A Mysterious Calm. She Was Simultaneously The Torturer And The Tortured, The Forcer And The Forced. This Sense Of Inner-directed Self-sufficiency Was What She Wanted Most Of All. It Gave Her Deep Solace.

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Who Can Really Distinguish Between The Sea And What's Reflected In It? Or Tell The Difference Between The Falling Rain And Loneliness?

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A Deserted Library In The Morning - There's Something About It That Really Gets To Me. All Possible Words And Ideas Are There, Resting Peacefully.

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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.

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Not That We Were Incompatible: We Just Had Nothing To Talk About.

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All Imperfections Are Forced Upon The Imperfect, So The 'perfect' Can Live Content And Oblivious.

Everyone, Deep In Their Hearts, Is Waiting For The End Of The World To Come.

There Are Three Ways You Can Get Along With A Girl: One, Shut Up And Listen To What She Has To Say; Two, Tell Her You Like What She's Wearing; And Three, Treat Her To Really Good Food...if You Do All That And Still Don't Get The Results You Want, Better Give Up.

Forgive Me For Stating The Obvious, But The World Is Made Up Of All Kinds Of People.

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Dreaming Is The Day Job Of Novelists, But Sharing Our Dreams Is A Still More Important Task For Us. We Cannot Be Novelists Without This Sense Of Sharing Something.

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If I Have Left A Wound Inside You, It Is Not Just Your Wound But Mine As Well.

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It's Not Me But The World That's Deranged.

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In The Spring Of Her Twenty-second Year, Sumire Fell In Love For The First Time In Her Life.

Whether You Take The Doughnut Hole As A Blank Space Or As An Entity Unto Itself Is A Purely Metaphysical Question And Does Not Affect The Taste Of The Doughnut One Bit.

No Matter How Far You Travel, You Can Never Get Away From Yourself.

Nobody's Easier To Fool, Than The Person Who Is Convinced That He Is Right.

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

Is It Against The Law For Me To Know It?

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An Unhealthy Soul Requires A Healthy Body.

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I Always Write My Novels With Music (i Don't Listened To The Music Seriously.) Music Seems To Encourage Me.

Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering Is Optional.

You Can Hide As Cleverly As You Like, But In The Final Analysis Mimicry Is Deception, Pure And Simple. It Doesn't Solve A Thing.

The Problem Was, I Think, That The Places I Fit In Were Always Falling Behind The Rimes.

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Understanding' Is Merely The Sum Total Of Our Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

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Falling In Love

Falling For You

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Understanding Is But The Sum Of Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

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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At The Entrance To The Original Tower, There Is A Stone Into Which Jung Carved Some Words With His Own Hand: 'cold Or Not, God Is Present.

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George Orwell Is Half Journalist, Half Fiction Writer. I'm 100 Percent Fiction Writer... I Don't Want To Write Messages. I Want To Write Good Stories. I Think Of Myself As A Political Person, But I Don't State My Political Messages To Anybody.

To Be Able To Talk To Your Heart’s Content About A Book You Like With Someone Who Feels The Same Way About It Is One Of The Greatest Joys That Life Can Offer.

Everybody Has To Start Somewhere. You Have Your Whole Future Ahead Of You. Perfection Doesn't Happen Right Away.

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.

At My Core, There Is Nothing. Neither Is It Parched Wastelands. At My Core, There Is Love. I'll Go On Loving That Ten-year-old Boy Named Tengo Forever --- His Strength, His Intelligence, His Kindness. He Does Not Exist Here, With Me, But Flesh That Does Not Exist Will Never Die, And Promises Unmade Are Never Broken.

Once Thing Goes Wrong, Then The Whole House Of Cards Collapses. And There's No Way You Can Extricate Yourself. Until Someone Comes Along To Drag You Out.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Is This What It Means To Go Back To Square One? Most Likely. He Had Nothing Left To Lose, Other Than His Life.

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

One Impossible Day, Of An Impossible Month, Of An Impossible Year.

As Time Goes On, You'll Understand. What Lasts, Lasts; What Doesn't, Doesn't. Time Solves Most Things. And What Time Can't Solve, You Have To Solve Yourself.

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

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

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

Nothing In The Real World Is As Beautiful As The Illusions Of A Person About To Lose Consciousness.

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

It's Basically Impossible For Everybody's Justice To Prevail Or Everybody's Happiness To Triumph, So Chaos Takes Over.

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.

I Write Weird Stories. I Don't Know Why I Like Weirdness So Much ... But When I Write, I Write Weird. That's Very Strange. When I'm Getting More And More Serious, I'm Getting More And More Weird.

Please Think Of Me Like An Endangered Species And Just Observe Me Quietly From Far Away. If You Try To Talk To Me Or Touch Me Casually, I May Get Intimidated And Bite You. So Please Be Careful.

Between The Time The Last Train Leaves And The First Train Arrives, The Place Changes: It's Not The Same As In Daytime.

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.

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 Want To Believe You, But If That's True, I Just Don't Get It. Why Does Loving Somebody Mean You Have To Hurt Them Just As Much? I Mean, If That's The Way It Goes, What's The Point Of Loving Someone?

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

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.

Painful Is The Stress When One Cannot Reproduce Or Convey Vividly To Others, However Hard He Tries, What He's Experienced So Intensely.

When The Fire Goes Out, You'll Start Feeling The Cold. You'll Wake Up Whether You Want To Or Not.

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

In Any Case, Suffice It To Say I Enjoyed Hearing About Faraway Places. I Had Stocked Up A Whole Store Of These Places, Like A Bear Getting Ready For Hibernation. I'd Close My Eyes, And Streets Would Materialize, Rows Of Houses Take Shape. I Could Hear People's Voices, Feel The Gentle, Steady Rhythm Of Their Lives, Those People So Distant, Whom I'd Probably Never Know.

The Pillow Smells Like The Sunlight, A Precious Smell.

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!

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

You Have To Make An Effort To Always Look At The Good Side, Always Think About The Good Things. Then You've Got Nothing To Be Afraid Of. If Something Bad Comes Up, You Do More Thinking At That Point.

People Leave Strange Little Memories Of Themselves Behind When They Die.

Sometimes When I Look At You, I Feel I'm Gazing At A Distant Star. It's Dazzling, But The Light Is From Tens Of Thousands Of Years Ago. Maybe The Star Doesn't Even Exist Any More. Yet Sometimes That Light Seems More Real To Me Than Anything.

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.

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

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.

When The Orbits Of These Two Satellites Of Ours Happened To Cross Paths, We Could Be Together. Maybe Even Open Our Hearts To Each Other. But That Was Only For The Briefest Moment. In The Next Instant We'd Be In Absolute Solitude. Until We Burned Up And Became Nothing.

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.

Whoa!" He Says With A Smile. The Wrinkles At The Corners Of His Eyes Deepen. "chicken Salad A La George Orwell!

Don’t You See? You And He Might Never Cross Paths Again. Of Course, A Chance Meeting Could Occur, And I Hope It Happens. I Really Do, For Your Sake. But Realistically Speaking, You Have To See There’s A Huge Possibility You’ll Never Be Able To Meet Him Again. And Even If You Do Meet, He Might Already Be Married To Somebody Else. He Might Have Two Kids. Isn’t That So? And In That Case, You May Have To Live The Rest Of Your Life Alone, Never Being Joined With The One Person You Love In All The World. Don’t You Find That Scary?

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

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.

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Lillian Hellman

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