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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.

-Haruki Murakami

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Were The Stars Out

Haruki Murakami

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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.

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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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Nothing So Consumes A Person As Meaningless Exertion

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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)

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

She Curled Up And Pressed Her Cheek Against His Chest. Her Ear Was Right Above His Heart. She Was Listening To His Thoughts. "i Need To Know This," Aomame Said. "that We're In The Same World, Seeing The Same Things.

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Far Away, I Could Hear Them Lapping Up My Brains. Like Macbeth's Witches, The Three Lithe Cats Surrounded My Broken Head, Slurping Up That Thick Soup Inside. The Tips Of Their Rough Tongues Licked The Soft Folds Of My Mind. And With Each Lick My Consciousness Flickered Like A Flame And Faded Away.

It Is A Lonely Life Sometimes, Like Throwing A Stone Into The Deep Darkness. It Might Hit Something, But You Can’t See It. The Only Thing You Can Do Is To Guess, And To Believe.

For Me, Writing A Novel Is Like Having A Dream. Writing A Novel Lets Me Intentionally Dream While I'm Still Awake. I Can Continue Yesterday's Dream Today, Something You Can't Normally Do In Everyday Life.

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.

We Were, The Two Of Us, Still Fragmentary Beings, Just Beginning To Sense The Presence Of An Unexpected, To Be-aquired Reality That Would Fill Us And Make Us Whole.

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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.

That's Gotta Be One Of The Principles Behind Reality. Accepting Things That Are Hard To Comprehend, And Leaving Them That Way.

Not Everything Was Lost In The Flow Of Time

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.

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

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.

Animals That Not Only Move By Their Own Free Will And Share Feelings With People But Also Possess Sight And Hearing Qualify As Deserving Of Names.

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

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Taking Crazy Things Seriously Is A Serious Waste Of Time.

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

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

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

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

Irrepressible Curiosity Vied With An Instinctive Fear.

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.

We Can, If We So Choose, Wander Aimlessly Over The Continent Of The Arbitrary. Rootless As Some Winged Seed Blown About On A Serendipitous Spring Breeze.

Reaching The Finish Line, Never Walking, And Enjoying The Race. These Three, In This Order, Are My Goals.

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Her Cry Was The Saddest Sound Of Orgasm That I Had Ever Heard.

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

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If You Really Want To Know What's Happening Here And Now, You've Got To Use Your Own Eyes And Your Own Judgment.

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

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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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.

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

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.

A State Of Chronic Powerlessness Eats Away At A Person

But I Found That The Longer You Teach, The More You Feel Like A Total Stranger To Yourself

This Is The Extent Of His Knowledge Of The Sea: It Was Very Big, It Was Salty, And Fish Lived There.

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

So The Fact That I’m Me And No One Else Is One Of My Greatest Assets. Emotional Hurt Is The Price A Person Has To Pay In Order To Be Independent.

Inspirational Life

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

The World Is An Inherently Unfair Place.

I Don’t Know What It Means To Live.

I'm All Alone, But I'm Not Lonely.

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.

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

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

Most Near-future Fictions Are Boring. It's Always Dark And Always Raining, And People Are So Unhappy.

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

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

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.

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For Some Reason All The Middle-aged Women He Knew Were Very Efficient.

Maybe Time Is Nothing At All Like A Straight Line. Perhaps It's Shaped Like A Twisted Doughnut. But For Tens Of Thousands Of Years, People Have Probably Been Seeing Time As A Straight Line That Continues On Forever. And That's The Concept They Based Their Actions On. And Until Now They Haven't Found Anything Inconvenient Or Contradictory About It. So As An Experiential Model, It's Probably Correct.

Fairness Is A Concept That Holds Only In Limited Situations. Yet We Want The Concept To Extend To Everything, In And Out Of Phase. From Snails To Hardware Stores To Married Life. Maybe No One Finds It, Or Even Misses It, But Fairness Is Like Love. What Is Given Has Nothing To Do With What We Seek.

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I'm Not So Weird To Me.

I Dream. Sometimes I Think That’s The Only Right Thing To Do. To Dream, To Live In The World Of Dreams. But It Doesn’t Last Forever. Wakefulness Always Comes To Take Me Back.

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.

Sometimes I Wonder Why I'm A Novelist Right Now. There Is No Definite Career Reason Why I Became A Writer. Something Happened, And I Became A Writer. And Now I'm A Successful Writer.

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

Reality Was Utterly Coolheaded And Utterly Lonely.

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

Long Distance Relationship

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

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

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.

When I Was A Teenager, I Thought How Great It Would Be If Only I Could Write Novels In English. I Had The Feeling That I Would Be Able To Express My Emotions So Much More Directly Than If I Wrote In Japanese.

You Know What It’s Like When You’re Trying To Fall Asleep And It Only Makes You More Wide Awake?

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

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

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

No Mistake About It. Ice Is Cold; Roses Are Red; I'm In Love. And This Love Is About To Carry Me Off Somewhere. The Current's Too Overpowering; I Don't Have Any Choice. It May Very Well Be A Special Place, Some Place I've Never Seen Before. Danger May Be Lurking There, Something That May End Up Wounding Me Deeply, Fatally. I Might End Up Losing Everything. But There's No Turning Back. I Can Only Go With The Flow. Even If It Means I'll Be Burned Up, Gone Forever.

Inside That Darkness, I Saw Rain Falling On The Sea. Rain Softly Falling On A Vast Sea, With No One There To See It. The Rain Strikes The Surface Of The Sea, Yet Even The Fish Don't Know It Is Raining.

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

In Japan, The Writers Have Made Up A Literary Community, A Circle, A Society. I Think 90 Percent Of Japan's Writers Live In Tokyo. Naturally, They Make A Community. There Are Groups And Customs, And So They Are Tied Up In A Way.

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

I Wrote A Huge Number Of Letters That Spring: One A Week To Naoko, Several To Reiko, And Several More To Midori. I Wrote Letters In The Classroom, I Wrote Letters At My Desk At Home With Seagull In My Lap, I Wrote Letters At Empty Tables During My Breaks At The Italian Restaurant. It Was As If I Were Writing Letters To Hold Together The Pieces Of My Crumbling Life.

Everything, Everything Seemed Once-upon-a-time.

Once Upon A Time

Love And Used Subarus Were Two Different Things. Weren't They?

I Began To Draw An Invisible Boundary Between Myself And Other People. No Matter Who I Was Dealing With. I Maintained A Set Distance, Carefully Monitoring The Person’s Attitude So That They Wouldn’t Get Any Closer. I Didn’t Easily Swallow What Other People Told Me. My Only Passions Were Books And Music

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

Then She Took My Hand And Touched It To The Wound Beside Her Eye. I Caressed The Half-inch Scar. As I Did So, The Waves Of Her Consciousness Pulsed Through My Fingertips And Into Me - A Delicate Resonance Of Longing. Probably Someone Should Take This Girl In His Arms And Hold Her Tight, I Thought. Probably Someone Other Than Me. Someone Qualified To Give Her Something. "goodbye, Mr. Wind-up Bird. See You Again Sometime.

She Was Seriously In Love, But She Never Made Demands.

Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone.

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

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.

Hey, What Is It With You? Why Are You So Spaced Out? You Still Haven't Answered Me." I Probably Still Haven't Completely Adapted To The World," I Said After Giving It Some Thought. "i Don't Know, I Feel Like This Isn't The Real World. The People, The Scene: They Just Don't Seem Real To Me." Midori Rested An Elbow On The Bar And Looked At Me. "there Was Something Like That In A Jim Morrison Song, I'm Pretty Sure." People Are Strange When You're A Stranger.

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

This Was Something Sure To Be Crammed Full Of Warm Secrets, Like An Antique Clock Built When Peace Filled The World.

You Know What Girls Are Like. They Turn Twenty Or Twenty-one And All Of A Sudden They Start Having These Concrete Ideas. They Get Super Realistic. And When That Happens, Everything That Seemed So Sweet And Lovable About Them Begins To Look Ordinary And Depressing.

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Kay Bailey Hutchison

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