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

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

Understanding the Quote: "let the wind change direction a little bit, and their cries turned..."

This quote by Haruki Murakami reflects deeply on the theme of wind. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Wind, Littles, Cry, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Haruki Murakami interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is celebrated for insightful thoughts on wind and littles. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Wind
Littles
Cry
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Memories And Thoughts Age, Just As People Do. But Certain Thoughts Can Never Age, And Certain Memories Can Never Fade.
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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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I Laughed. “you’re Too Young To Be So … Pessimistic,” I Said, Using The English Word. “pessi-what?” “pessimistic. It Means Looking Only At The Dark Side Of Things.” “pessimistic … Pessimistic …” She Repeated The English To Herself Over And Over, And Then She Looked Up At Me With A Fierce Glare. “i’m Only Sixteen,” She Said, “and I Don’t Know Much About The World, But I Do Know One Thing For Sure. If I’m Pessimistic, Then The Adults In This World Who Are Not Pessimistic Are A Bunch Of Idiots.
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Still, In The End, We All Die Just The Same.
Ends
Stills
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Everybody's Born With Some Different Thing At The Core Of Their Existence. And That Thing, Whatever It Is, Becomes Like A Heat Source That Runs Each Person From The Inside. I Have One Too, Of Course. Like Everybody Else. But Sometimes It Gets Out Of Hand. It Swells Or Shrinks Inside Me, And It Shakes Me Up. What I'd Really Like To Do Is Find A Way To Communicate That Feeling To Another Person.
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Spend Your Money On The Things Money Can Buy. Spend Your Time On The Things Money Can’t Buy.
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The Ocean Was One Of The Greatest Things He Had Ever Seen In His Life—bigger And Deeper Than Anything He Had Imagined. It Changed Its Color And Shape And Expression According To Time And Place And Weather. It Aroused A Deep Sadness In His Heart, And At The Same Time It Brought His Heart Peace And Comfort.
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I Wonder How It Turns Out That We All Lead Such Different Lives. Take You And Your Sister, For Example. You're Born To The Same Parents, You Grow Up In The Same Household, You're Both Girls. How Do You End Up With Such Wildly Different Personalities?...one Puts On A Bikini Like Little Semaphore Flags And Lies By The Pool Looking Sexy, And The Other Puts On Her School Bathing Suit And Swims Her Heart Out Like A Dolphin.
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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.
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One Of These Days They'll Be Making A Film Where The Whole Human Race Gets Wiped Out In A Nuclear War, But Everything Works Out In The End.
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When There's Nothing To Do, You Do Nothing Slowly And Intently.
My Short Stories Are Like Soft Shadows I Have Set Out In The World, Faint Footprints I Have Left. I Remember Exactly Where I Set Down Each And Every One Of Them, And How I Felt When I Did. Short Stories Are Like Guideposts To My Heart.
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Life Doesn't Require Ideals. It Requires Standards Of Action.
Action
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If You Listen To The Radio For A Whole Hour There's Maybe One Decent Song. The Rest Is Mass-produced Garbage
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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.
Summer
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For Example, The Wind Has Its Reasons. We Just Don't Notice As We Go About Our Lives. But Then, At Some Point, We Are Made To Notice. The Wind Envelops You With A Certain Purpose In Mind, And It Rocks You. The Wind Knows Everything That's Inside You. And Not Just The Wind. Everything, Including A Stone. They All Know Us Very Well. From Top To Bottom. It Only Occurs To Us At Certain Times. And All We Can Do Is Go With Those Things. As We Take Them In, We Survive, And Deepen.
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At Least He Never Walked.
I Do Feel That I’ve Managed To Make Something I Could Maybe Call My World…over Time…little By Little. And When I’m Inside It, To Some Extent, I Feel Kind Of Relieved. But The Very Fact I Felt I Had To Make Such A World Probably Means That I’m A Weak Person, That I Bruise Easily, Don’t You Think? And In The Eyes Of Society At Large, That World Of Mine Is A Puny Little Thing. It’s Like A Cardboard House: A Puff Of Wind Might Carry It Off Somewhere.
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I'm Not Human. I'm A Piece Of Machinery. I Don't Need To Feel A Thing. Just Forge On Ahead.
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I Guess I Felt Attached To My Weakness. My Pain And Suffering Too. Summer Light, The Smell Of A Breeze, The Sound Of Cicadas - If I Like These Things, Why Should I Apologize?
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Everybody Burns Out In This World; Amateur, Pro, It Doesn't Matter, They All Burn Out, They All Get Hurt, The Ok Guys And The Not-ok Guys Both. That's Why Everybody Takes Out A Little Insurance. I've Got Some Too, Here At The Bottom Of The Heap. That Way, You Manage To Survive If You Burn Out. If You're All By Yourself And Don't Belong Anywhere, You Go Down Once, And You're Out. Finished.
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The Rain That Fell On The City Runs Down The Dark Gutters And Empties Into The Sea Without Even Soaking The Ground
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Don't Pointless Things Have A Place, Too, In This Far-from-perfect World? Remove Everything Pointless From An Imperfect Life, And It'd Lose Even Its Imperfection.
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Everybody Has Some One Thing They Do Not Want To Lose," Began The Man. "you Included. And We Are Professionals At Finding Out That Very Thing. Humans By Necessity Must Have A Midway Point Between Their Desires And Their Pride. Just As All Objects Must Have A Center Of Gravity. This Is Something We Can Pinpoint. Only When It Is Gone Do People Realize It Even Existed.
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We're Both Looking At The Same Moon, In The Same World. We're Connected To Reality By The Same Line. All I Have To Do Is Quietly Draw It Towards Me.
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There Has To Be Pain. That's The Rule.
Pain
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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.
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My Priority Is My Books, At Least At This Point. What I Have To Do Is Write The Narrative Of This Time.
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You Can Hide Memories, But You Can’t Erase The History That Produced Them.
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Listen - God Only Exists In People's Minds. Especially In Japan, God's Always Been Kind Of A Flexible Concept. Look At What Happened After The War. Douglas Macarthur Ordered The Divine Emperor To Quit Being God, And He Did, Making A Speech Saying He Was Just An Ordinary Person. So After 1946 He Wasn't God Anymore. That's What Japanese Gods Are Like--they Can Be Tweaked And Adjusted. Some American Comping On A Cheap Pipe Gives The Order And Presto Change-o--god's No Longer God. A Very Postmodern Kind Of Thing. If You Think God's There, He Is. If You Don't, He Isn't.
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Me, I've Seen 45 Years And I've Only Figured Out One Thing. That's This: If A Person Would Just Make The Effort, There's Something To Be Learned From Everything. From Even The Most Ordinary, Commonplace Things, There's Always Something You Can Learn. I Read Somewhere That They Said There's Even Different Philosophies In Razors. Fact Is, If It Weren't For That, Nobody'd Survive.
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This Is What It Means To Live On. When Granted Hope, A Person Uses It As Fuel, As A Guidepost To Life. It Is Impossible To Live Without Hope.
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What We Call The Present Is Given Shape By An Accumulation Of The Past.
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I Think I'll Stay Alive Here A Bit Longer, And See With My Own Eyes What's Going To Happen. I Can Still Die After That - It Won't Be Too Late. Probably.
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So That's How We Live Our Lives. No Matter How Deep And Fatal The Loss, No Matter How Important The Thing That's Stolen From Us--that's Snatched Right Out Of Our Hands--even If We Are Left Completely Changed, With Only The Outer Layer Of Skin From Before, We Continue To Play Out Our Lives This Way, In Silence. We Draw Ever Nearer To The End Of Our Allotted Span Of Time, Bidding It Farewell As It Trails Off Behind. Repeating, Often Adroitly, The Endless Deeds Of The Everyday. Leaving Behind A Feeling Of Immeasurable Emptiness.
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My Face, My Self, What Would They Mean To Anybody? Just Another Stiff. So This Self Of Mine Passes Some Other's Self On The Street - What Do We Have To Say To Each Other? Hey There! Hi Ya!that's About It. Nobody Raises A Hand. No One Turns Around To Take Another Look.
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Artists Are Those Who Can Evade The Verbose.
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The Better You Were Able To Imagine What You Wanted To Imagine, The Farther You Could Flee From Reality.
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Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone.
If You Really Want To Know Something, You Have To Be Willing To Pay The Price.
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Let The Wind Change Direction A Little Bit, And Their Cries Turned To Whispers.
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You Have To Wait Until Tomorrow To Find Out What Tomorrow Will Bring.
Waiting
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For Novelists Or Musicians, If They Really Want To Create Something, They Need To Go Downstairs And Find A Passage To Get Into The Second Basement. What I Want To Do Is Go Down There, But Still Stay Sane.
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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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Everything Passes. Nobody Gets Anything For Keeps. And That's How We've Got To Live.
You Always Look So Cool, Like No Matter What Happens, It’s Got Nothing To Do With You, But You’re Not Really Like That. In Your Own Way, You’re Out There Fighting As Hard As You Can, Even If Other People Can’t Tell By Looking At You.
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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.
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My Heroes Don't Have Anything Special. They Have Something To Tell Other People But They Don't Know How, So They Talk To Themselves.
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You Make Do With What You Have. As You Age You Learn Even To Be Happy With What You Have.
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You Can Have Tons Of Talent, But It Won't Necessarily Keep You Fed. If You Have Sharp Instincts, Through, You'll Never Go Hungry.
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I Hate Requests. They Make Me Feel Unhappy. It's Like When I Take A Book Out Of The Library. As Soon As I Start To Read It, All I Can Think About Is When I'll Finish It.
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I Have This Strange Feeling That I'm Not Myself Anymore. It's Hard To Put Into Words, But I Guess It's Like I Was Fast Asleep, And Someone Came, Disassembled Me, And Hurriedly Put Me Back Together Again. That Sort Of Feeling.
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[but] We Accept Irony Through A Device Called Metaphor. And Through That We Grow And Become Deeper Human Beings.
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"between A High, Solid Wall And An Egg That Breaks Against It, I Will Always Stand On The Side Of The Egg." Yes, No Matter How Right The Wall May Be And How Wrong The Egg, I Will Stand With The Egg. Someone Else Will Have To Decide What Is Right And What Is Wrong; Perhaps Time Or History Will Decide. If There Were A Novelist Who, For Whatever Reason, Wrote Works Standing With The Wall, Of What Value Would Such Works Be?
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It's The Same With Menus And Men And Just About Anything Else: We Think We're Choosing Things For Ourselves, But In Fact We May Not Be Choosing Anything. It Could Be That Everthing's Being Decided In Advance And We Pretend We're Making Choices. Free Will May Be An Illusion. I Often Think That.
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Her Cry Was The Saddest Sound Of Orgasm That I Had Ever Heard.
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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.
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What Happens When People Open Their Hearts?"... "they Get Better.
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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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Will You Wait For Me Forever?
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Two People Can Sleep In The Same Bed And Still Be Alone When They Close Their Eyes
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It Doesn’t Matter How Old I Get, But As Long As I Continue To Live I’ll Always Discover Something New About Myself.
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Where The Road Sloped Upward Beyond The Trees, I Sat And Looked Toward The Building Where Naoko Lived. It Was Easy To Tell Which Room Was Hers. All I Had To Do Was Find The One Window Toward The Back Where A Faint Light Trembled. I Focused On That Point Of Light For A Long, Long Time. It Made Me Think Of Something Like The Final Throb Of A Soul's Dying Embers. I Wanted To Cup My Hands Over What Was Left And Keep It Alive. I Went On Watching The Way Jay Gatsby Watched That Tiny Light On The Opposite Shore Night After Night.
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Thinking
Light
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.
Morning
Loneliness
Book
My Only Passions Were Books And Music. As You Might Guess, I Led A Lonely Life… Not That I Knew What I Wanted In Life - I Didn’t. I Loved Reading Novels To Distraction, But Didn’t Write Well Enough To Be A Novelist; Being An Editor Or A Critic Was Out, Too, Since My Tastes Ran To The Extremes. Novels Should Be For Pure Personal Enjoyment, I Decided, Not Part Of Your Work Or Study. That’s Why I Didn’t Study Literature
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Reading
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.
Real
Dark
Doors
Such Wounds To The Heart Will Probably Never Heal. But We Cannot Simply Sit And Stare At Our Wounds Forever.
Heart
Forever
Staring
Forgive Me For Stating The Obvious, But The World Is Made Up Of All Kinds Of People.
People
Forgive Me
Forgiving
Lost Opportunities, Lost Possibilities, Feelings We Can Never Get Back. That's Part Of What It Means To Be Alive. But Inside Our Heads - At Least That's Where I Imagine It - There's A Little Room Where We Store Those Memories. A Room Like The Stacks In This Library. And To Understand The Workings Of Our Own Heart We Have To Keep On Making New Reference Cards. We Have To Dust Things Off Every Once In Awhile, Let In Fresh Air, Change The Water In The Flower Vases. In Other Words, You'll Live Forever In Your Own Private Library.
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Flower
Heart
I Contented Myself With Whiskey, For Medicinal Purposes. It Helped Numb My Various Aches And Pains. Not That The Alcohol Actually Reduced The Pain; It Just Gave The Pain A Life Of Its Own, Apart From Mine.
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Purpose
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You Know What It’s Like When You’re Trying To Fall Asleep And It Only Makes You More Wide Awake?
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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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Morning
Overhead, The Two Moons Worked Together To Bathe The World In A Strange Light.
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Light
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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.
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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.
Thinking
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It's Like A Kid Standing At The Window Watching The Rain.
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You Have To Dream Intentionally. Most People Dream A Dream When They Are Asleep. But To Be A Writer, You Have To Dream While You Are Awake, Intentionally.
Dream
People
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If You Can’t Understand It Without An Explanation, You Can’t Understand It With An Explanation.
Life
Explanation
Ifs
So Once You're Dead There's Just Nothing? Mari: Basically... Korogi: I Get So Scared When I Start Thinking About This Stuff. I Can Hardly Breathe, And My Whole Body Wants To Shrink Into A Corner. It's So Much Easier To Just Believe In Reincarnation.
Believe
Thinking
Body
Strong And Independent? I’m Neither. I’m Just Being Pushed Along By Reality, Whether I Like It Or Not.
Strong
Independent
Reality
To Me, Love Is A Pure Idea Forged In Flesh, Awkwardly Maybe, But It Had To Connect To Somewhere, Despite Twists And Turns Of Underground Cable. An All-too-perfect Thing. Sometimes The Lines Get Crossed. Or You Get A Wrong Number. But That's Nobody's Fault. It'll Always Be Like That, So Long As We Exist In This Physical Form. As A Matter Of Principle.
Love
Wrong Number
Ideas
So For All That We Might Speak Words In Each Other's Vicinity, This Could Never Develop Into Anything That Could Be Called A Conversation. It Was As Though We Were Speaking In Different Languages. If The Dalai Lama Were On His Deathbed And The Jazz Musician Eric Dolphy Were To Try To Explain To Him The Importance Of Choosing One's Engine Oil In Accordance With Changes In The Sound Of The Bass Clarinet, That Exchange Might Have Been More Worthwhile And Effective Than My Conversations With Noboru Wataya.
Oil
Trying
Musician
I'm Not So Weird To Me.
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People
Language
The Heavy Smell Of Flower Petals Stroked The Walls Of My Lungs.
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Flower
Smell
So Many Dreams, So Many Disappointments, So Many Promises. And In The End, They All Just Vanish.
Dream
Disappointment
Promise
No Matter What You Tell Me, No Matter How Legitimate Your Reasons, I Can Never Just Forget About You, I Can Never Push The Years We Spent Together Out Of My Mind. I Can't Do It Because It Really Happened, They Are Part Of My Life, And There Is No Way I Can Just Erase Them. That Would Be The Same As Erasing My Own Self.
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Years
Mind
By Then Running Had Entered The Realm Of The Metaphysical. First There Came The Action Of Running, And Accompanying It There Was This Entity Known As Me. I Run; Therefore I Am.
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Action
Any Explanation Or Logic That Explains Everything So Easily Has A Hidden Trap In It. I'm Speaking From Experience. Somebody Once Said If It's Something A Single Book Can Explain, It's Not Worth Having Explained. What I Mean Is Don't Leap To Any Conclusions.
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Logic
For Some Reason All The Middle-aged Women He Knew Were Very Efficient.
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Middle
Efficient
As I Already Explaned, I Don't Have Any Form. I'm A Conceptual Metaphysical Object.
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Form
Objects
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.
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Real
Heart
As With Marathon Runs And Lengths Of Toilet Paper, There Had To Be Standards To Measure Up To.
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Grandfather Always Said School’s A Place Where They Take Sixteen Years To Wear Down Your Brain. Grandfather Hardly Went To School Either.
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Years
Brain
I've Always Done Whatever I Felt Like Doing In Life. People May Try To Stop Me, And Convince Me I'm Wrong, But I Won't Change.
Running
People
Trying
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.
Hurt
Thinking
Who I Am
Music Always Stimulates My Imagination. When I'm Writing I Usually Have Some Baroque Music On Low In The Background Chamber Music By Bach, Telemann, And The Like.
Writing
Imagination
Chamber Music
A Man Is Like A Two-story House. The First Floor Is Equipped With An Entrance And A Living Room. On The Second Floor Is Every Family Member's Room. They Enjoy Listening To Music And Reading Books. On The First Underground Floor Is The Ruin Of People's Memories. The Room Filled With Darkness Is The Second Underground Floor.
Memories
Book
Reading
Reaching The Finish Line, Never Walking, And Enjoying The Race. These Three, In This Order, Are My Goals.
Race
Order
Goal
They Take The Circuits Out Of People’s Brains That Make It Possible For Them To Think For Themselves. Their World Is Like The One That George Orwell Depicted In His Novel. I’m Sure You Realize That There Are Plenty Of People Who Are Looking For Exactly That Kind Of Brain Death. It Makes Life A Lot Easier. You Don’t Have To Think About Difficult Things, Just Shut Up And Do What Your Superiors Tell You To Do.
Thinking
People
Brain
The World In Books Seemed So Much More Alive To Me Than Anything Outside. I Could See Things I'd Never Seen Before. Books And Music Were My Best Friends. I Had A Couple Of Good Friends At School, But Never Met Anyone I Could Really Speak My Heart To.
Couple
Book
Heart
Some People Think Literature Is High Culture And That It Should Only Have A Small Readership. I Don't Think So... I Have To Compete With Popular Culture, Including Tv, Magazines, Movies And Video Games.
Thinking
Games
People
I’m Free, I Think. I Shut My Eyes And Think Hard And Deep About How Free I Am, But I Can’t Really Understand What It Means. All I Know Is I’m Totally Alone. All Alone In An Unfamiliar Place, Like Some Solitary Explorer Who’s Lost His Compass And His Map. Is This What It Means To Be Free? I Don’t Know, And I Give Up Thinking About It.
Giving Up
Mean
Eye
The Library Was Like A Second Home. Or Maybe More Like A Real Home, More Than The Place I Lived In. By Going Every Day I Got To Know All The Lady Librarians Who Worked There. They Knew My Name And Always Said Hi. I Was Painfully Shy, Though, And Could Barely Reply.
Real
Home
Names
Among The Many Values In Life, I Appreciate Freedom Most.
Appreciate
Value Of Life
Values
Nature Is Actually Unnatural
Unnatural
Some People Can Work Their Butts Off And Never Get What They're Aiming For While Others Can Get It Without Any Effort At All.
People
Effort
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.
Clever
Dark
Breathing
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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Firsts
Kind
Nobody's Going To Win All The Time. On The Highway Of Life You Can't Always Be In The Fast Lane.
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Winning
Lanes
"they Tell Us That The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself, But I Don't Believe That." He Said. Then, A Moment Later, He Added: "oh, The Fear Is There, All Right. It Comes To Us In Many Different Forms, At Different Times, And Overwhelms Us. But The Most Frightening Thing We Can Do At Such Times Is To Turn Our Backs On It, To Close Our Eyes. For Then We Take The Most Precious Thing Inside Us And Surrender It To Something Else. In My Case, That Something Was The Wave."
Believe
Eye
Different
Probably." "again With The Probablys." "a World Full Of Probablys," She Said.
World
Said
Precipitate As Weather, She Appeared From Somewhere, Then Evaporated, Leaving Only Memory.
Memories
Weather
Leaving
I Was Always Hungry For Love. Just Once, I Wanted To Know What It Was Like To Get My Fill Of It -- To Be Fed So Much Love I Couldn't Take Any More. Just Once.
Love
Hungry
Feds
Not To Excuse Myself, But When You Have People Right In Front Of You Denying Your Very Presence Like That, Then See If You Don't Doubt Whether You Actually Exist. I Look At My Hands Half Expecting To See Clear Through Them.
Hands
People
Doubt
Sometimes I Think I've Got This Hard Kernel In My Heart, And Nothing Much Can Get Inside It. I Doubt If I Can Really Love Anybody.
Heart
Thinking
Doubt
You're Wrong. The Mind Is Not Like Raindrops. It Does Not Fall From The Skies, It Does Not Lose Itself Among Other Things. If You Believe In Me At All, Then Believe This: I Promise You I Will Find It. Everything Depends On This." "i Believe You," She Whispers After A Moment. "please Find My Mind.
Believe
Fall
Sky
I Get Irritated, I Get Upset. Especially When I'm In A Hurry. But I See It All As Part Of Our Training. To Get Irritated Is To Lose Our Way In Life.
Way In Life
Upset
Training
Sex Is An Extremely Subtle Undertaking, Unlike Going To The Department Store On A Sunday To Buy A Thermos.
Sex
Sunday
Subtle
I've Always Liked Libraries. They're Quiet And Full Of Books And Full Of Knowledge.
Book
Library
Quiet
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.
Sleep
Blow
Volcanoes
Death Is Not The Opposite Of Life, But A Part Of It.
Life
Death
Opposites
Isn't Life Strange? There Are People Who Have So Many Leftover Clothes They Can't Stuff Them All In Their Wardrobe. And Then There Are People Like Me, Whose Socks Never Match.
Clothes
People
Stuff
Either I'm Funny Or The World's Funny. I Don't Know Which. The Bottle And Lid Don't Fit. It Could Be The Bottle's Fault Or The Lid's Fault. In Either Case, There's No Denying That The Fit Is Bad.
World
Faults
Bottles
Dreams Come From The Past, Not From The Future. Dreams Shouldn't Control You--you Should Control Them.
Dream
Past
Should
It's Because Of You When I'm In Bed In The Morning That I Can Wind My Spring And Tell Myself I Have To Live Another Good Day.
Morning
Spring
Good Day
Everybody Has To Start Somewhere. You Have Your Whole Future Ahead Of You. Perfection Doesn't Happen Right Away.
Perfection
Fresh Start
Happens
What We Seek Is Some Kind Of Compensation For What We Put Up With.
Life
Finding Love
Kind
Here, Too, A Brand-new Day Is Beginning. It Could Be A Day Like All The Others, Or It Could Be A Day Remarkable Enough In Many Ways To Remain In The Memory. In Either Case, For Now, For Most People, It Is A Blank Sheet Of Paper.
Memories
People
New Day
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.
Running
Mean
Opposites
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.
Knowing
Accepting
Can Do
Loneliness Becomes An Acid That Eats Away At You.
Loneliness
Acid
The Dead Will Always Be Dead, But We Have To Go On Living.
Goes On
Narrow Minds Devoid Of Imagination. Intolerance, Theories Cut Off From Reality, Empty Terminology, Usurped Ideals, Inflexible Systems. Those Are The Things That Really Frighten Me. What I Absolutely Fear And Loathe.
Cutting
Reality
Imagination
Every Writer Has His Writing Technique - What He Can And Can't Do To Describe Something Like War Or History. I'm Not Good At Writing About Those Things, But I Try Because I Feel It Is Necessary To Write That Kind Of Thing.
War
Writing
Trying
Unfortunately, The Clock Is Ticking, The Hours Are Going By. The Past Increases, The Future Recedes. Possibilities Decreasing, Regrets Mounting.
Life
Time
Regret
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.
Darkness
Looks
Goes On
Not That Running Away's Going To Solve Everything. I Don't Want To Rain On Your Parade Or Anything, But I Wouldn't Count On Escaping This Place If I Were You. No Matter How Far You Run. Distance Might Not Solve Anything.
Running
Distance
Rain
Mental Acuity Was Never Born From Comfortable Circumstances.
Born
Circumstances
Comfortable
But If You Peeled Away The Ornamental Egos That She Had Built, There Was Only An Abyss Of Nothingness And The Intense Thirst That Came With It.
Ego
Intense
Abyss
I’m Not Good At Talking,” Naoko Said. “haven’t Been For The Longest While. I Start To Say Something And The Wrong Words Come Out. Wrong Or Sometimes Completely Backward. I Try To Go Back And Correct It, But Things Get Even More Complicated And Confused, So That I Don’t Even Remember What I Started To Say In The First Place. Like I Was Split Into Two Or Something, One Half Chasing The Other. And There’s This Big Pillar In The Middle And They Go Chasing Each Other Around And Around It. The Other Me Always Latches Onto The Right Word And This Me Absolutely Never Catches Up
Confused
Talking
Two
Killing Time Is Not An Easy Job.
Time
Jobs
Killing
That's How People Live In The Real World: Forcing Stuff On Each Other.
Real
People
World
Life Is Here, Death Is Over There. I Am Here, Not Over There.
Life Is
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.
People
Atheism
Unhappy
The Journey I'm Taking Is Inside Me. Just Like Blood Travels Down Veins, What I'm Seeing Is My Inner Self And What Seems Threatening Is Just The Echo Of The Fear In My Heart.
Fear
Heart
Journey
When You Are Used To The Kind Of Life -of Never Getting Anything You Want- You Stop Knowing What It Is You Want.
Knowing
Want
Kind
I Don't Know A Whole Lot About Symbolism. There Seems To Me To Be A Potential Danger In Symbolism. I Feel More Comfortable With Metaphors And Similes.
Symbolism
Metaphor
Danger
I Can Be Hurt, You Know. I Can Get As Exhausted As Anybody Else. I Can Feel So Bad I Want To Cry, Too.
Hurt
Want
Exhausted
It Is Hard To Be An Individual In Japan.
Japan
Individual
Hard
But What Seems Like A Reasonable Distance To One Person Might Feel Too Far To Somebody Else.
Distance
Might
Feels
What Gave Money Its True Meaning Was Its Dark-night Namelessness, Its Breathtaking Interchangeability.
Dark
Night
Breathtaking
She Was Truly A Beautiful Girl. I Could Feel A Small Polished Stone Sinking Through The Darkest Waters Of My Heart. All Those Deep Convoluted Channels And Passageways, And Yet She Managed To Toss Her Pebble Right Down To The Bottom Of It All.
Beautiful
Girl
Heart
I Tell Lies Sometimes. The Last Time I Lied Was A Year Ago. I Absolutely Detest Lying. You Could Say That Lying And Silence Are The Two Greatest Sins Of Present Day Society. Actually, I Lie A Lot, And I'm Always Clamming Up.
Lying
Years
Two
Memories Warm You Up From The Inside. But They Also Tear You Apart.
Life
Memories
Inspiration
Love And Used Subarus Were Two Different Things. Weren't They?
Two
Different
Used
People's Memories Are Maybe The Fuel They Burn To Stay Alive.
Life
Memories
People
So I'm Not Crazy After All! I Thought It Looked Good Myself Once I Cut It All Off. Not One Guy Likes It, Though. They All Tell Me I Look Like A First Grader Or A Concentration Camp Survivor. What's This Thing That Guys Have For Girls With Long Hair? Fascists, The Whole Bunch Of Them! Why Do Guys All Think Girls With Long Hair Are The Classiest, The Sweetest, The Most Feminine? I Mean, I Myself Know At Least Two Hundred And Fifty Unclassy Girls With Long Hair. Really.
Girl
Crazy
Mean
You Don’t Get It, Do You?" I Said. “it’s Not A Question Of ‘what Then’. Some People Get A Kick Out Of Reading Railroad Timetables And That’s All They Do All Day. Some People Make Huge Model Boats Out Of Matchsticks. So What’s Wrong If There Happens To Be One Guy In The World Who Enjoys Trying To Understand You?
Reading
People
Guy
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.
Regret
House
Half
If You Keep On Writing For Three Years, Every Day, You Should Be Strong. Of Course, You Have To Be Strong Mentally, Also. But In The First Place, You Have To Be Strong Physically. That Is A Very Important Thing. Physically And Mentally You Have To Be Strong.
Strong
Writing
Years
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.
Love
Life
Memories
Distance Might Not Solve Anything, No Matter How Far You Run.
Running
Distance
Might
I Tell You, Mr. Okada, A Cold Beer At The End Of The Day Is The Best Thing Life Has To Offer. Some Choosy People Say That A Too Cold Beer Doesn't Taste Good, But I Couldn't Disagree More. The First Beer Should Be So Cold You Can't Even Taste It. The Second One Should Be A Little Less Chilled, But I Want That First One To Be Like Ice. I Want It To Be So Cold My Temples Throb With Pain. This Is My Own Personal Preference Of Course.
Pain
Beer
Ice
Things Pass Us By. Nobody Can Catch Them. That's The Way We Live Our Lives.
Way
Our Lives
Some Things, You Know, If You Say Them, It Makes Them Not True?
Knows
Ifs
Everything. Things You Lost. Things You’re Gonna Lose. Everything. Here’s Where It All Ties Together.
Ties
Together
Lost Things
Closing Your Eyes Isn't Going To Change Anything. Nothing's Going To Disappear Just Because You Can't See What's Going On. In Fact, Things Will Even Be Worse The Next Time You Open Your Eyes. That's The Kind Of World We Live In. Keep Your Eyes Wide Open. Only A Coward Closes His Eyes. Closing Your Eyes And Plugging Up Your Ears Won't Make Time Stand Still.
Eye
Coward
Ears
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.
Writing
Sleep
Night
A Gentleman Is Someone Who Does Not What He Wants To Do, But What He Should Do.
Gentleman
Doe
Want
What's Nurtured Slowly Grows Well.
Wells
Grows
You Could Be Anybody When You're Writing. That's The Reason That I'm Writing: To Be Anybody. You Can Put Your Feet In Various Shoes And Experience Anything.
Writing
Shoes
Feet
I Write My Novels Personally, Desperately And Non-negligently. When I Write My Novels, I Think About My Novels Only, And Never Do Other Works.
Writing
Thinking
Novel
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
Men
Years
Long
It Seems To Me That Very Sad Things Always Contain An Element Of The Comical
Elements
Very Sad
Seems
I Never Could Stand Being Forced To Do Something I Didn't Want To Do At A Time I Didn't Want To Do It. Whenever I Was Able To Do Something I Liked To Do, Though, When I Wanted To Do It, And The Way I Wanted To Do It, I'd Give It Everything I Had.
Giving
Want
Able
And It Came To Me Then. That We Were Wonderful Traveling Companions But In The End No More Than Lonely Lumps Of Metal In Their Own Separate Orbits. From Far Off They Look Like Beautiful Shooting Stars, But In Reality They're Nothing More Than Prisons, Where Each Of Us Is Locked Up Alone, Going Nowhere. 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.
Beautiful
Lonely
Stars
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.
Beautiful
Strong
Heart
No Matter How Long You Stand There Examining Yourself Naked Before A Mirror, You'll Never See Reflected What's Inside.
Mirrors
Long
Naked
I Wasn't Particularly Afraid Of Death Itself. As Shakespeare Said, Die This Year And You Don't Have To Die The Next.
Years
Next
Said
I Didn't Start Running Because Somebody Asked Me To Become A Runner. Just Like I Didn't Become A Novelist Because Someone Asked Me To. One Day, Out Of The Blue, I Wanted To Write A Novel. And One Day, Out Of The Blue, I Started To Run-simply Because I Wanted To. I've Always Done Whatever I Felt Like Doing In Life. People May Try To Stop Me, And Convince Me I'm Wrong, But I Won't Change.
Running
Writing
Blue
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.
Spring
Snakes
Two
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.
Real
Reading
Night
It Was As If I Were Writing Letters To Hold Together The Pieces Of My Crumbling Life.
Writing
Together
Crumbling
What’s Most Important Is What You Can’t See But Can Feel In Your Heart. To Be Able To Grasp Something Of Value, Sometimes You Have To Perform Seemingly Inefficient Acts. But Even Activities That Appear Fruitless Don’t Necessarily End Up So. That’s The Feeling I Have, As Someone Who’s Felt This, Who’s Experienced It.
Heart
Feelings
Important
A Person Learns How To Love Himself Through The Simple Acts Of Loving And Being Loved By Someone Else.
Simple
How To Love
Persons
It Feels Good To Think About You When I'm Warm In Bed. I Feel As If You're Curled Up There Beside Me, Fast Asleep. And I Think How Great It Would Be If It Were True.
Relationship
Distance
Thinking
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.
Love
Romantic
Dream
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.
Book
Reading
School
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.
Memories
Taken
Self
One Last Word Of Advice, Though, Mr. Okada, Though You May Not Want To Hear This. There Are Things In This World It Is Better Not To Know About. Of Course, Those Are The Very Things That People Most Want To Know About. It's Strange.
People
Advice
World
I May Not Look It, But I Can Be A Very Patient Guy. And Killing Time Is One Of My Specialities.
Guy
Looks
May
We Never Choose Anything At All. Things Happen. Or Not.
All Things
Happens
Things Happen
What I Feel For Her Is A Wholly Different Emotion. It Stands And Walks On Its Own, Living And Breathing And Throbbing And Shaking Me To The Roots Of My Being.
Breathing
Roots
Different
Somewhere In His Body--perhaps In The Marrow Of His Bones--he Would Continue To Feel Her Absence.
Body
Bones
Absence
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