Background Image

...

Strange And Mysterious Things, Though, Aren't They - Earthquakes? We Take It For Granted That The Earth Beneath Our Feet Is Solid And Stationary. We Even Talk About People Being 'down To Earth' Or Having Their Feet Firmly Planted On The Ground. But Suddenly One Day We See That It Isn't True. The Earth, The Boulders, That Are Supposed To Be Solid, All Of A Sudden Turn As Mushy As Liquid - From The Short Story "thailand

-Haruki Murakami

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Strange And Mysterious Things,

Haruki Murakami

...

Strange And Mysterious Things, Though, Aren't They - Earthquakes? We Take It For Granted That The Earth Beneath Our Feet Is Solid And Stationary. We Even Talk About People Being 'down To Earth' Or Having Their Feet Firmly Planted On The Ground. But Suddenly One Day We See That It Isn't True. The Earth, The Boulders, That Are Supposed To Be Solid, All Of A Sudden Turn As Mushy As Liquid - From The Short Story "thailand

Views: 11

Topic

Mysterious Things

More From Haruki Murakami

It's My Motto For Life. 'walk Slowly; Drink Lots Of Water.

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.

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.

Sometimes I Get Real Lonely Sleeping With You.

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.

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

Waves Of Thought Are Stirring. In A Twilight Corner Of Her Consciousness, One Tiny Fragment And Another Tiny Fragment Call Out Wordlessly To Eachother, Their Spreading Ripples Intermingling.

I'm Not Going To Get Involved In A Debate With You. Just Remember This: The Gods Give, And The Gods Take Away. Even If You Are Not Aware Of Having Been Granted What You Posses, The Gods Remember What They Gave You. They Don't Forget A Thing. You Should Use The Abilities You Have Been Granted With The Utmost Care.

Were The Stars Out When I Left The House Last Evening? All I Could Remember Was The Couple In The Skyline Listening To Duran Duran. Stars? Who Remembers Stars? Come To Think Of It, Had I Even Looked Up At The Sky Recently? Had The Stars Been Wiped Out Of The Sky Three Months Ago, I Wouldn’t Have Known.

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

Don't Feel Sorry For Yourself. Only Arseholes Do That.

The World Would Be A Pretty Dull Place If It Were Made Up Only Of The First-rate, Right?

There Weren't Any Curtains In The Windows, And The Books That Didn't Fit Into The Bookshelf Lay Piled On The Floor Like A Bunch Of Intellectual Refugees.

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

Some Things In Life Are Too Complicated To Explain In Any Language.

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.

Cell Phones Are So Convenient That They're An Inconvenience.

You're Walking Through A Field All By Yourself One Day In Spring And This Sweet Little Bear Cub With Velvet Fur And Shiny Little Eyes Comes Walking Along. And He Says To You, 'hi, There, Little Lady. Want To Tumble With Me?' So You And The Bear Spend The Whole Day In Each Other's Arms, Tumbling Down This Clover-covered Hill. Nice, Huh?

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

I Have No Idea! I Have Been Writing For 35 Years And From The Beginning Up To Now The Situation's Almost The Same. I'm Kind Of An Ugly Duckling. Always The Duckling, Never The Swan.

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?

I Just Gave Them A Little Scare. A Touch Of Psychological Terror. As Joseph Conrad Once Wrote, True Terror Is The Kind That Men Feel Towards Their Imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)

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.

Sometimes It's Not The People Who Change, It's The Mask That Falls Off.

A Regular Wind-up Toy World This Is, I Think. Once A Day The Wind-up Bird Has To Come And Wind The Springs Of This World. Alone In This Fun House, Only I Grow Old, A Pale Softball Of Death Swelling Inside Me. Yet Even As I Sleep Somewhere Between Saturn And Uranus, Wind-up Birds Everywhere Are Busy At Work Fulfilling Their Appointed Rounds.

I Think Of Myself As More The Non-turn-on Type. So When I Do Get Turned On, I Don’t Trust It, I Have To Investigate The Source.

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

I'm Not A Fast Reader. I Like To Linger Over Each Sentence, Enjoying The Style. If I Don't Enjoy The Writing, I Stop.

The World Is An Inherently Unfair Place.

Age Certainly Hadn't Conferred Any Smarts On Me. Character Maybe, But Mediocrity Is A Constant, As One Russian Writer Put It. Russian Writers Have A Way With Aphorisms. They Probably Spend All Winter Thinking Them Up.

I Saw That She Was Crying. Before I Knew It, I Was Kissing Her. Others On The Platform Were Staring At Us, But I Didn't Care About Such Things Anymore. We Were Alive, She And I. And All We Had To Think About Was Continuing To Live.

In Dreams Begins Responsiblities.

So Many Dreams, So Many Disappointments, So Many Promises. And In The End, They All Just Vanish.

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.

What's Really Important Here," I Whispered Loudly To Myself,"is Not The Big Things Other People Have Thought Up, But The Small Things You, Yourself Have

It's Basically The Same In All Periods Of Societies. If You Belong To The Majority, You Can Avoid Thinking About Lots Of Troubling Things.' 'and Those Troubling Things Are All You /can/ Think About When You're One Of The Few.' 'that's About The Size Of It,' She Said Mournfully. 'but Maybe, If You're In A Situation Like That, You Learn To Think For Yourself.' 'yes, But Maybe What You End Up Thinking For Yourself /about/ Is All Those Troubling Things.

As Long As I Stared At The Clock, At Least The World Remained In Motion. Not A Very Consequential World, But In Motion Nonetheless. And As Long As I Knew The World Was Still In Motion, I Knew I Existed. Not A Very Consequential Existence, But An Existence Nonetheless. It Struck Me As Wanting That Someone Should Confirm His Own Existence Only By The Hands Of An Electric Wall Clock. There Had To Be A More Cognitive Means Of Confirmation. But Try As I Might, Nothing Less Facile Came To Mind.

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

Time Expands, Then Contracts, All In Tune With The Stirrings Of The Heart.

There Wasn't A Cloud In The Sky, No Wind, And Everything Was Quiet Around Us - All We Could Hear Were Birds Chirping In The Woods. The War Seemed Like Something In A Faraway Land That Had Nothing To Do With Us. We Sang Songs As We Hiked Up The Hill, Sometimes Imitating The Birds We Heard. Except For The Fact That The War Was Still Going On, It Was A Perfect Morning.

Everything Passes. Nobody Gets Anything For Keeps. And That's How We've Got To Live.

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?

No Matter What Form The Relationship Might Take, He Was The Only Person She Could Picture Sharing Her Life With.

It Was A Strange Feeling, Like Touching A Void.

Autumn Finally Arrived. And When It Did, I Came To A Decision. Something Had To Give: I Couldn't Keep On Living Like This.

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

If Only I Could Fall Sound Asleep And Wake Up In My Old Reality!

A Friend To Kill Time Is A Friend Sublime.

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

Taking Responsibility

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

Memories And Thoughts Age, Just As People Do. But Certain Thoughts Can Never Age, And Certain Memories Can Never Fade.

Music Brings A Warm Glow To My Vision, Thawing Mind And Muscle From Their Endless Wintering.

While They're Still Alive, People Can Become Ghosts.

What Was Lost Was Lost. There Was No Retrieving It, However You Schemed, No Returning To How Things Were, No Going Back.

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

And So They Parted, She To The East, And He To The West. The Test They Had Agreed Upon, However, Was Utterly Unnecessary. They Should Never Have Undertaken It, Because They Really And Truly Were Each Other's 100% Perfect Lovers, And It Was A Miracle That They Had Ever Met. But It Was Impossible For Them To Know This, Young As They Were. The Cold, Indifferent Waves Of Fate Proceeded To Toss Them Unmercifully.

We Knew Exactly What We Wanted In Each Other. And Even So, It Ended. One Day It Stopped, As If The Film Simply Slipped Off The Reel.

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.

She's Kind Of Funny Looking. Her Face Is Out Of Balance--broad Forehead, Button Nose, Freckled Cheeks, And Pointy Ears. A Slammed-together, Rough Sort Of Face You Can't Ignore. Still, The Whole Package Isn't So Bad. For All I Know Maybe She's Not So Wild About Her Own Looks, But She Seems Comfortable With Who She Is, And That's The Important Thing.

What's Nurtured Slowly Grows Well.

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

If I'm Going To Merely Ramble, Maybe I Should Just Snuggle Under The Warm Covers, Think Of Miu, And Play With Myself.

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

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.

I Can't Imagine How American Readers Will React To A Novel, But If The Story Is Appealing It Doesn't Matter Much If You Don't Catch All The Detail. I'm Not Too Familiar With The Geography Of Nineteenth Century London, For Instance, But I Still Enjoy Reading Dickens.

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

What We Call The Present Is Given Shape By An Accumulation Of The Past.

When People Tell A Lie About Something, They Have To Make Up A Bunch Of Lies To Go With The First One. ‘mythomania’ Is The Word For It.

I'm In No Position To Hand Down Any Advice," He Said, "but There's A Rule I Follow When I Don't Know What To Do." "a Rule?" "if You Have To Choose Between Something That Has Form And Something That Doesn't, Go For The One Without Form. That's My Rule. Whenever I Run Into A Wall I Follow That Rule, And It Always Works Out. Even If It's Hard Going At The Time.

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

Did You Ever See Anyone Shot By A Gun Without Bleeding?

"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?

Nobody's Going To Win All The Time. On The Highway Of Life You Can't Always Be In The Fast Lane.

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.

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

He Does Not Exist Here, With Me, But Flesh That Does Not Exist Will Never Die, And Promises Unmade Are Never Broken.

At Any Rate, That’s How I Started Running. Thirty Three—that’s How Old I Was Then. Still Young Enough, Though No Longer A Young Man. The Age That Jesus Christ Died. The Age That Scott Fitzgerald Started To Go Downhill. That Age May Be A Kind Of Crossroads In Life. That Was The Age When I Began My Life As A Runner, And It Was My Belated, But Real, Starting Point As A Novelist.

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.

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

A Theory Is A Battlefield In Your Head.

My Grandpa Always Said Asking A Question Is Embarrassing For A Moment, But Not Asking Is Embarrassing For A Lifetime.

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.

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

End Of The World

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.

I Used To Think The Years Would Go By In Order, That You Get Older One Year At A Time. But It's Not Like That. It Happens Overnight.

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.

I Said Nothing For A Time, Just Ran My Fingertips Along The Edge Of The Human-shaped Emptiness That Had Been Left Inside Me.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Light Of Morning Decomposes Everything.

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.

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.

I Was Confident That I Was A Special Person. But Time Slowly Chips Away At Life. People Don't Just Die When Their Time Comes. They Gradually Die Away, From The Inside. And Finally The Day Comes When You Have To Settle Accounts. Nobody Can Escape It. People Have To Pay The Price For What They've Received. I Have Only Just Learned That Truth.

Why Do I Act Like This, Agreeing When I Really Disagree, Letting People Force Me To Do Things I Don't Want To Do?

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

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

You Are Entering A Phase Of Your Life In Which Many Different Things Will Occur...bad Things That Seem Good At First And Good Things That Seem Bad At First.

Ice Contains No Future , Just The Past, Sealed Away. As If They're Alive, Everything In The World Is Sealed Up Inside, Clear And Distinct. Ice Can Preserve All Kinds Of Things That Way- Cleanly, Clearly. That's The Essence Of Ice, The Role It Plays.

I Wrote My First Two Long Novels And An Anthology Of Short Narratives, When I Was A Manager Of My Own Jazz Bar. There Was Not Enough Time To Write And I Didn't Know How To Write Novels. Therefore, I Made Written Collages Of Aphorisms And Rags.

I Often Dream About The Dolphin Hotel.

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.

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.

There's Not Much You Can Do About Time - It Just Keeps On Passing. But Experience? Don't Tell Me That. I'm Not Proud Of It, But I Don't Have Any Sexual Desire. And What Sort Of Experience Can A Writer Have If She Doesn't Feel Passion? It'd Be Like A Chef Without An Appetite.

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

The Things She Most Wanted To Tell Him Would Lose Their Meaning The Moment She Put Them Into Words.

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.

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

Long Distance Relationship

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.

You’re Optimistic One Moment, Only To Be Racked The Next By The Certainty That It Will All Fall To Pieces. And In The End It Does.

What Matters Is Deciding In Your Heart To Accept Another Person Completely. When You Do That, It Is Always The First Time And The Last.

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.

Once She Was Out Of The Car And Gone, My World Was Suddenly Hollow And Meaningless.

Why Do People Have To Build Such Depressing Places? I'm Not Saying That Every Nook And Cranny Of The World Has To Be Beautiful, But Does It Have To Be This Ugly?

Taking Crazy Things Seriously Is A Serious Waste Of Time.

Better To Be A First-class Matchbox Than A Second-class Match.

The Grounds Of The Place Were Dominated By Several Large, Old Willow Trees That Towered Over The Surrounding Stone Wall And Swayed Soundlessly In The Wind Like Lost Souls.

I Never Trust People With No Appetite. It's Like They're Always Holding Something Back On You.

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.

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.

Is It Possible To Become Friends With A Butterfly?

The Point Is, Not To Resist The Flow. You Go Up When You're Supposed To Go Up And Down When You're Supposed To Go Down. When You're Supposed To Go Up, Find The Highest Tower And Climb To The Top. When You're Supposed To Go Down, Find The Deepest Well And Go Down To The Bottom. When There's No Flow, Stay Still. If You Resist The Flow, Everything Dries Up. If Everything Dries Up, The World Is Darkness.

Losing You Is Most Difficult For Me, But The Nature Of My Love For You Is What Matters. If It Distorts Into Half-truth, Then Perhaps It Is Better Not To Love You. I Must Keep My Mind But Loose You.

You Said That The Mind Is Like The Wind But Perhaps It Is We Who Are Like The Wind Knowing Nothing, Simply Blowing Through. Never Aging, Never Dying.

Knowing Nothing

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

I’ve Built A Wall Around Me, Never Letting Anybody Inside And Trying Not To Venture Outside Myself

When Someone Is Trying Very Hard To Get Something, They Don't. And When They're Running Away From Something As Hard As They Can, It Usually Catches Up With Them.

I Can Never Say What I Want To Say, It's Been Like This For A While Now. I Try To Say Something But All I Get Are Wrong Words - The Wrong Words Or The Exact Opposite Words From What I Mean. I Try To Correct Myself, And That Only Makes It Worse. I Lose Track Of What I Was Trying To Say To Begin With. It's Like I'm Split In Two And Playing Tag With Myself. One Half Is Chasing This Big, Fat Post. The Other Me Has The Right Words, But This Can't Catch Her.

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

This May Be The Most Important Proposition Revealed By History: At The Time, No One Knew What Was Coming.

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.

Pointless Things

The Worst Thoughts Usually Strike In The Dead Of The Night.

I Was Reborn," She Said, Her Hot Breath Brushing His Ear. "you Were Reborn," Tengo Said. "because I Died Once." "you Died Once," Tengo Repeated. "on A Night When There Was A Cold Rain Falling," She Said. "why Did You Die?" "so I Would Be Reborn Like This." "you Would Be Reborn," Tengo Said. "more Or Less," She Whispered Quietly. "in All Sorts Of Forms.

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.

How Many Times Have You Said, 'this Is It. I've Finally Found My One True Love'? And How Many Times Has The Reality Turned Out Differently? Paperback Romances And Fairy Tales Promote An Ideal Of A First And Only Love, But Few Of Us Can Claim To Have Had Such Uncomplicated Good Fortune. For Most People, The Process Of Finding The Perfect Partner Is One Trial And Error: Breakups, Makeups, Missed Opportunities And Misunderstandings. Human Love Is A Fragile Creation, And Sometimes The Smallest Thing - The Wrong Choice Of Words Or A Single Clumsy Gesture - Can Make Love Shatter, Stall Or Fade Away.

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

Two People Can Sleep In The Same Bed And Still Be Alone When They Close Their Eyes

Don't You Think It Would Be Wonderful To Get Rid Of Everything And Everybody And Just Go Some Place Where You Don't Know A Soul?

A State Of Chronic Powerlessness Eats Away At A Person

Writing Is Fun - At Least Mostly. I Write For Four Hours Every Day. After That I Go Running. As A Rule, 10 Kilometers (6.2 Miles). That's Easy To Manage.

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

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

Hundreds Of Butterflies Flitted In And Out Of Sight Like Short-lived Punctuation Marks In A Stream Of Consciousness Without Beginning Or End.

Punctuation Marks

Listen To This, Nimit. Follow Coleman Hawkins' Improvised Lines Very Carefully. He Is Using Them To Tell Us Something. Pay Very Close Attention. He Is Telling Us The Story Of The Free Spirit That Is Doing Everything It Can To Escape From Within Him. That Same Kind Of Spirit Is Inside Me, Inside You. There-you Can Hear It, I'm Sure: The Hot Breath, The Shivering Heart. (thailand)

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.

Will You Wait For Me Forever?

Knowledge And Ability Were Tools, Not Things To Show Off.

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

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

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

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

I Wasn't In Love With Her. And She Didn't Love Me. For Me The Question Of Love Was Irrelevant. What I Sought Was The Sense Of Being Tossed About By Some Raging, Savage Force, In The Midst Of Which Lay Something Absolutely Crucial. I Had No Idea What That Was. But I Wanted To Thrust My Hand Right Inside Her Body And Touch It, Whatever It Was.

You Mean Machines Are Like Humans?" I Shook My Head. "no, Not Like Humans. With Machines The Feeling Is, Well, More Finite. It Doesn't Go Any Further. With Humans It's Different. The Feeling Is Always Changing. Like If You Love Somebody, The Love Is Always Shifting Or Wavering. It's Always Questioning Or Inflating Or Disappearing Or Denying Or Hurting. And The Thing Is, You Can't Do Anything About It, You Can't Control It. With My Subaru, It's Not So Complicated.

Still, In The End, We All Die Just The Same.

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

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.

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.

I’m Me, And At The Same Time Not Me. That’s What It Felt Like. A Very Still, Quiet Feeling.

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.

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

What We Needed Were Not Words And Promises But A Steady Accumulation Of Small Realities.

Whether In Music Or In Fiction, The Most Basic Thing Is Rhythm. Your Style Needs To Have Good, Natural, Steady Rhythm, Or People Won't Keep Reading Your Work.

I Never Made Any Plan Before Writing, However I Succeeded. I Enjoyed Writing With Excitement ,"what Happen On The Next Page?"

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.

"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."

Memories Warm You Up From The Inside. But They Also Tear You Apart.

In The World We Live In, What We Know And What We Don't Know Are Like Siamese Twins, Inseparable, Existing In A State Of Confusion.

Once, When I Was Younger, I Thought I Could Be Someone Else. I'd Move To Casablanca, Open A Bar, And I'd Meet Ingrid Bergman. Or More Realistically - Whether Actually More Realistic Or Not - I'd Tune In On A Better Life, Something More Suited To My True Self. Toward That End, I Had To Undergo Training. I Read The Greening Of America, And I Saw Easy Rider Three Times. But Like A Boat With A Twisted Rudder, I Kept Coming Back To The Same Place. I Wasn't Anywhere. I Was Myself, Waiting On The Shore For Me To Return.

The Curious Thing About Individuals Is That Their Singularity Always Goes Beyond Any Category Or Generalization In The Book.

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.

He Was Silent For Thirty Seconds, Maybe A Minute. I Uncrossed My Legs Under The Table And Wondered If This Was The Right Moment To Leave. It Was As If My Whole Life Revolved Around Trying To Judge The Right Point In A Conversation To Say Goodbye.

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.

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.

Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering Is Optional.

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

I Hurt Myself Deeply, Though At The Time I Had No Idea How Deeply. I Should Have Learned Many Things From That Experience, But When I Look Back On It, All I Gained Was One Single, Undeniable Fact. That Ultimately I Am A Person Who Can Do Evil. I Never Consciously Tried To Hurt Anyone, Yet Good Intentions Notwithstanding, When Necessity Demanded, I Could Become Completely Self-centred, Even Cruel. I Was The Kind Of Person Who Could, Using Some Plausible Excuse, Inflict On A Person I Cared For A Wound That Would Never Heal.

Understanding' Is Merely The Sum Total Of Our Misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding

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.

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.

People Have Their Own Reasons For Dying. It Might Look Simple, But It Never Is. It's Just Like A Rock. What's Above Ground Is Only A Small Part Of It. But If You Start Pulling, It Keeps Coming And Coming. The Human Mind Dwells Deep In Darkness. Only The Person Himself Knows The Real Reason, And Maybe Not Even Then.

Our Hearts Are Not Stones. A Stone May Disintegrate In Time And Lose Its Outward Form. But Hearts Never Disintegrate. They Have No Outward Form, And Whether Good Or Evil, We Can Always Communicate Them To One Another.

Time Passes Slowly. Nobody Says A Word, Everyone Lost In Quiet Reading. One Person Sits At A Desk Jotting Down Notes, But The Rest Are Sitting There Silently, Not Moving, Totally Absorbed. Just Like Me.

I Can Be Hurt, You Know. I Can Get As Exhausted As Anybody Else. I Can Feel So Bad I Want To Cry, Too.

When I Am Writing, I Do Not Distinguish Between The Natural And Supernatural. Everything Seems Real. That Is My World, You Could Say.

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.

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

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

The Best Way To Think About Reality, I Had Decided, Was To Get As Far Away From It As Possible.

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

Like A Chinese Box, The World Of The Novel Contained Smaller Worlds, And Inside Those Were Yet Smaller Worlds. Together, These Worlds Made Up A Single Universe, And The Universe Waited There In The Book To Be Discovered By The Reader.

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

Listen. I May Not Be Much, But I'm All I've Got. Maybe You Need A Magnifying Glass To Find My Face In My High School Graduation Photo. Maybe I Haven't Got Any Family Or Friends. Yes, Yes, I Know All That. But, Strange As It Might Seem, I'm Not Entirely Dissatisfied With Life... I Feel Pretty Much At Home With What I Am. I Don't Want To Go Anywhere. I Don't Want Any Unicorns Behind Fences.

I Myself, As I'm Writing, Don't Know Who Did It. The Readers And I Are On The Same Ground. When I Start To Write A Story, I Don't Know The Conclusion At All And I Don't Know What's Going To Happen Next. If There Is A Murder Case As The First Thing, I Don't Know Who The Killer Is. I Write The Book Because I Would Like To Find Out. If I Know Who The Killer Is, There's No Purpose To Writing The Story.

The Ground We Stand On Looks Solid Enough, But If Something Happens It Can Drop Right Out From Under You.

As A Novelist, You Could Say That I Am Dreaming While I Am Awake, And Every Day I Can Continue With Yesterday's Dream. Because It Is A Dream, There Are So Many Contradictions And I Have To Adjust Them To Make The Story Work. But, In Principle, The Original Dream Does Not Change.

Such Wounds To The Heart Will Probably Never Heal. But We Cannot Simply Sit And Stare At Our Wounds Forever.

Trending Author

Gian Carlo Menotti

Category