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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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Reading Was Like An

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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

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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Genius Or Fool, You Don't Live In The World Alone. You Can Hide Underground Or You Can Build A Wall Around Yourself, But Somebody's Going To Come Along And Screw Up The Works.

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.

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.

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

As If To Build A Fence Around The Fatal Emptiness Inside Her, She Had To Create A Sunny Person That She Became. But If You Peeled Away The Ornamental Egos That She Had Built, There Was Only An Abbys Of Nothingness And The Intense Thirst That Came With It. Though She Tried To Forget It, The Nothingness Would Visit Her Periodically - On A Lonely Rainy Afternoon, Or At Dawn When She Woke Up From A Nightmare. What She Needed At Such Times Was To Be Held By Someone, Anyone.

The Heavy Smell Of Flower Petals Stroked The Walls Of My Lungs.

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

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Most Everything You Think You Know About Me Is Nothing More Than Memories.

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

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

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When You're Young, You Think You Can Handle Anything. By The Time You Find Out Otherwise, It's Already Too Late. You Got A Stocking Wrapped Around Your Neck.

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But If Something Did Happen, It Happened. Whether It's Right Or Wrong. I Accept Everything That Happens, And That's How I Became The Person I Am Now.

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.

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.

Then When Dusk Began To Settle He Would Retrace His Steps, Back To His Own World. And On The Way Home, A Loneliness Would Always Claim His Heart. He Could Never Quite Get A Grip On What It Was. It Just Seemed That Whatever Lay Waiting "out There" Was All Too Vast, Too Overwhelming For Him To Possibly Ever Make A Dent In.

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I Don't Know How Many Good Books I Still Have In Me; I Hope There Are Another Four Or Five.

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

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

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

That's Evolution. Evolution's Always Hard. Hard And Bleak. No Such Thing As Happy Evolution

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.

It's All Matter Of Attitude. You Could Let A Lot Of Things Bother You If You Wanted To But It's Pretty Much The Same Anywhere You Go, You Can Manage.

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.

Suicides? Heart Attacks? The Papers Didn't Seem Interested. The World Was Full Of Ways To Die, Too Many To Cover. Newsworthy Deaths Had To Be Exceptional. Most People Go Unobserved.

Ever Since Time Began (when Was That, I Wonder?), It's Been Moving Ever Forward Without A Moment's Rest. And One Of The Privileges Given To Those Who've Avoided Dying Young Is The Blessed Right To Grow Old.

For A Long Time, She Held A Special Place In My Heart. I Kept This Special Place Just For Her, Like A "reserved" Sign On A Quiet Corner Table In A Restaurant. Despite The Fact That I Was Sure I'd Never See Her Again.

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.

I Think That My Job Is To Observe People And The World, And Not To Judge Them. I Always Hope To Position Myself Away From So-called Conclusions. I Would Like To Leave Everything Wide Open To All The Possibilities In The World.

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

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

In His Or Her Own Way, Everyone I Saw Before Me Looked Happy. Whether They Were Really Happy Or Just Looked It, I Couldn't Tell. But They Did Look Happy On This Pleasant Early Afternoon In Late September, And Because Of That I Felt A Kind Of Loneliness New To Me, As If I Were The Only One Here Who Was Not Truly Part Of The Scene.

How About Proust's In Search Of Lost Time?" Tamaru Asked. "if You've Never Read It This Would Be A Good Opportunity To Read The Whole Thing." "have You Read It?" "no, I Haven't Been In Jail, Or Had To Hide Out For A Long Time. Someone Once Said Unless You Have Those Kinds Of Opportunities, You Can't Read The Whole Of Proust.

Potentiality Knocks On The Door Of My Heart. [on Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning ]

Was The Earth Put Here Just To Nourish Human Loneliness?

Even Chance Meetings Are The Result Of Karma… Things In Life Are Fated By Our Previous Lives. That Even In The Smallest Events There’s No Such Thing As Coincidence.

Her Smile Steps Offstage For A Moment, Then Does An Encore, All While I'm Dealing With My Blushing Face.

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

But The Silence Spoke Volumes.

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.

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

No Matter How Clear Things Might Become In The Forest Of Story, There Was Never A Clear-cut Solution, As There Was In Math. The Role Of A Story Was, In The Broadest Terms, To Transpose A Problem Into Another Form. Depending On The Nature And The Direction Of The Problem, A Solution Might Be Suggested In The Narrative. Tengo Would Return To The Real World With That Solution In Hand. It Was Like A Piece Of Paper Bearing The Indecipherable Text Of A Magic Spell. It Served No Immediate Practical Purpose, But It Contained A Possibility.

That's Wrong," She Declared. "everyone Must Have One Thing That They Can Excel At. It's Just A Matter Of Drawing It Out, Isn't It? But School Doesn't Know How To Draw It Out. It Crushes The Gift. It's No Wonder Most People Never Get To Be What They Want To Be. They Just Get Ground Down.

Is It Against The Law For Me To Know It?

But Intolerant,narrow Minds With No Imagination Are Like Parasites That Transform The Host,change Form,and Continue To Thrive. They're A Lost Cause, And I Don't Want Anyone Like That Coming In Here.

Until The Bitter End, The Emptiness Inside Her Was Hers Alone.

When I Start To Write, I Don't Have Any Plan At All. I Just Wait For The Story To Come.

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

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.

Loving Another Person Is A Wonderful Thing, And If That Love Is Sincere, No One Ends Up Tossed Into A Labyrinth. You Have To Have More Faith In Yourself.

Understanding Is But The Sum Of Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

Concentration Is One Of The Happiest Things In My Life.

I Have Been Told I've Got A Darkish Personality. A Few Times." Takahashi Swings His Trombone Case From His Right Shoulder To His Left. Then He Says, "it's Not As If Our Lives Are Divided Simply Into Light And Dark. There's Shadowy Middle Ground. Recognizing And Understanding The Shadows Is What A Healthy Intelligence Does. And To Acquire A Healthy Intelligence Takes A Certain Amount Of Time And Effort. I Don't Think You Have A Particularly Dark Character.

I Closed My Eyes And Tried To Sleep. But It Was Not Until Much Later That I Was Able To Get Any Real Sleep. In A Place Far Away From Anyone Or Anywhere, I Drifted Off For A Moment.

I Am Nothing. I’m Like Someone Who’s Been Thrown Into The Ocean At Night, Floating All Alone. I Reach Out, But No One Is There. I Call Out, But No One Answers. I Have No Connection To Anything.

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

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.

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

As Long As There's Such A Thing As Time, Everybody's Damaged In The End, Changed Into Something Else. It Always Happens, Sooner Or Later.

Things Outside You Are Projections Of What's Inside You, And What's Inside You Is A Projection Of What's Outside. So When You Step Into The Labyrinth Outside You, At The Same Time You're Stepping Into The Labyrinth Inside.

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

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

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.

Waiting For Your Answer Is One Of The Most Painful Things I Have Ever Been Through. At Least Let Me Know Whether Or Not I Hurt You.

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.

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

Well, Finally, The Events I've Been Through Have Been Tremendously Complicated. All Kinds Of Characters Have Come On The Scene, And Strange Things Have Happened One After Another, To The Point Where, If I Try To Think About Them In Order, I Lose Track.

There Had To Be Something Wrong With My Life. I Should Have Been Born A Yugoslavian Shepherd Who Looked Up At The Big Dipper Every Night.

But Who Can Say What's Best? That's Why You Need To Grab Whatever Chance You Have Of Happiness Where You Find It, And Not Worry About Other People Too Much. My Experience Tells Me That We Get No More Than Two Or Three Such Chances In A Life Time, And If We Let Them Go, We Regret It For The Rest Of Our Lives.

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

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.

Despite Your Best Efforts, People Are Going To Be Hurt When It's Time For Them To Be Hurt.

That's What We All Do: Endlessly Take The Long Way Around.

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.

No Truth Can Cure The Sorrow We Feel From Losing A Loved One. No Truth, No Sincerity, No Strength, No Kindness Can Cure That Sorrow. All We Can Do Is See It Through To The End And Learn Something From It, But What We Learn Will Be No Help In Facing The Next Sorrow That Comes To Us Without Warning.

Losing A Loved One

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

It's True That At The Time I Was Fond Of Kurt Vonnegut And Richard Brautigan, And It Was From Them That I Learned About This Kind Of Simple, Swift-paced Style, But The Main Reason For The Style Of My First Novel Is That I Simply Did Not Have The Time To Write Sustained Prose.

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

I 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.

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

They Were Each Like A Mirror For The Other, Reflecting The Changes In Themselves.

It Was As If I Were Writing Letters To Hold Together The Pieces Of My Crumbling Life.

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.

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

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.

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

When I'm Running I Don't Have To Talk To Anybody And Don't Have To Listen To Anybody. This Is A Part Of My Day I Can't Do Without.

Most Of The Psychological Differences Between Men And Women Seem To Come From Differences In Their Reproductive System

One Heart Is Not Connected To Another Through Harmony Alone. They Are, Instead, Linked Deeply Through Their Wounds

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

Nature Is Actually Unnatural

I Dream. Sometimes I Think That's The Only Right Thing To Do.

Now And Then May Not Be Enough…you Have To Enjoy It While You’re Still Young. Enjoy It To The Fullest. You Can Use The Memories Of What You Did To Warm Your Body After You Get Old And Can’t Do It Anymore.

That’s What Love’s All About. You’re The Only One Having Those Wonderful Feelings, But You Have To Go It Alone As You Wander Through The Dark Your Mind And Body Have To Bear It All. All By Yourself.

Generally, People Who Are Good At Writing Letters Have No Need To Write Letters. They've Got Plenty Of Life To Lead Inside Their Own Context.

I Think Certain Types Of Processes Don’t Allow For Any Variation. If You Have To Be Part Of That Process, All You Can Do Is Transform—or Perhaps Distort—yourself Through That Persistent Repetition, And Make That Process A Part Of Your Own Personality.

It Is Not That The Meaning Cannot Be Explained. But There Are Certain Meanings That Are Lost Forever The Moment They Are Explained In Words.

If We Reverse The Outer Shell And The Essence--in Other Words, Consider The Outer Shell The Essence And The Essence Only The Shell--our Lives Might Be A Whole Lot Easier To Understand.

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

I've Been Running A Full Marathon Every Year For More Than 20 Years, And My Record Is Getting Worse. Getting Older, Getting Worse. It's Natural.

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

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

Life Doesn't Require Ideals. It Requires Standards Of Action.

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

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.

I'll Never See Them Again. I Know That. And They Know That. And Knowing This, We Say Farewell.

Long Distance Relationship

And Everywhere, Infinite Options, Infinite Possibilities. An Infinity, And At The Same Time, Zero. We Try To Scoop It All Up In Our Hands, And What We Get Is A Handful Of Zero. That's The City

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.

Running Taught Me To Have Faith In My Skills As A Writer. I Learned How Much I Can Demand Of Myself, When I Need A Break, And When The Break Starts To Get Too Long. I Known How Hard I Am Allowed To Push Myself.

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

As Long As An Individual's Alive, He Will Undergo Experience In Some Form Or Other, And Those Experiences Are Stored Up Instant By Instant. To Stop Experiencin' Is To Die.

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.

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

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.

Something In Her Small Eyes Caught The Sunlight And Glistened, Like A Glacier On The Faraway Face Of A Mountain.

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

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.

Everybody Feels Safe Belonging Not To The Excluded Minority But To The Excluding Majority. You Think, Oh, I’m Glad That’s Not Me. It’s Basically The Same In All Periods In All Societies. If You Belong To The Majority, You Can Avoid Thinking About Lots Of Troubling Things.

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.

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

That Was The Rule. Break One Of My Rules Once, And I’m Bound To Break Many More.

I’m The Kind Of Person Who Likes To Be By Himself. To Put A Finer Point On It, I’m The Type Of Person Who Doesn’t Find It Painful To Be Alone. I Find Spending An Hour Or Two Every Day Running Alone, Not Speaking To Anyone, As Well As Four Or Five Hours Alone At My Desk, To Be Neither Difficult Nor Boring. I’ve Had This Tendency Ever Since I Was Young, When, Given A Choice, I Much Preferred Reading Books On My Own Or Concentrating On Listening To Music Over Being With Someone Else. I Could Always Think Of Things To Do By Myself.

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

But I Didn't Walk A Single Step. I Stopped A Lot To Stretch, But I Never Walked. I Didn't Come Here To Walk. I Came To Run. That's The Reason-the Only Reason-i Flew All The Way To The Northern Tip Of Japan. No Matter How Slow I Might Run, I Wasn't About To Walk. That Was The Rule.

Results Aside, The Ability To Have Complete Faith In Another Human Being Is One Of The Finest Qualities A Person Can Possess.

What A Terrible Thing It Is To Wound Someone You Really Care For And To Do It So Unconsciously.

I Think Of Rivers, Of Tides. Forests And Water Gushing Out. Rain And Lightning. Rocks And Shadows. All Of These Are In Me.

Each Day The Sun Would Rise And Set, The Flag Would Be Raised And Lowered. Each Sunday I Would Have A Date With My Dead Friend’s Girl. I Had No Idea What I Was Doing Or What I Was Going To Do.

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.

Of What Value Is A Civilization That Can't Toast A Piece Of Bread As Ordered?

Is Action Merely The Incidental Product Of Thought, Or Is Thought The Consequential Product Of Action?

I'm Kind Of A Low-key Guy. The Spotlight Doesn't Suit Me. I'm More Of A Side Dish--cole Slaw Or French Fries Or A Wham! Backup Singer.

I'm A Writer. I Don't Support Any War. That's My Principle.

Most People Are Not Looking For Provable Truths. As You Said, Truth Is Often Accompanied By Intense Pain, And Almost No One Is Looking For Painful Truths. What People Need Is Beautiful, Comforting Stories That Make Them Feel As If Their Lives Have Some Meaning. Which Is Where Religion Comes From.

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.

That's What The World Is , After All: An Endless Battle Of Contrasting Memories.

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

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

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.

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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Antonio Machado

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