Haruki Murakami

“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.”

“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.”

“According to Chekhov," Tamaru said, rising from his chair, "once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.""Meaning what?""Meaning, don't bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.”

“So you're thinking you'd rather not hand me a pistol?''They're dangerous. And illegal. And Chekov is qa writer you can trust.''But this is not a story. We're talking about the real word.'Tamaru narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Aomame. Then, slowly opening his mouth, he said 'Who knows?”

“A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it-even if the person himself wants to stop it.”

“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.”

“Why must you have this map?" she asks. "Even with a map, you will never leave this Town."She brushes away the bread crumbs that have fallen on her lap and looks toward the Pool."Do you want to leave here?" she asks again.I shake my head. Do I mean this as a "no", or is it only that I do not know?"I just want to find out about the Town," I say. "The lay of the land, the history, the people, ... I want to know who made the rules, what has sway over us. I want even to know what lies beyond."She slowly rolls her head, then fixes upon my eyes. "There is no beyond," she says. "Did you not know? We are at the End of the World. We are here forever.”

“People are by and large a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.”

“She only felt revulsion for any kind if religious fundamentalists. The very thought if such people's intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of their own superiority, and thei callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.”

“I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn't find as many. Some of them really look big and distinct, like if you reached your hand out intently you could touch them. The whole thing is breathtaking. Not just beautiful though--the stars like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. What I've done up till now, what I'm going to do--they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing thought before. Bot just stars--how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I'll never outrun that awful feeling. (135)”

“When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.”

“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.”

“My life is like a trunk stuffed with dirty laundry. It contains more than enough material to drive any one human being to mental aberration - maybe two or three people's worth? My sex life alone would do. It’s nothing I could talk about to anyone. No, I can’t go to a doctor. I have to solve this on my own.”

“Everything is there but there are no parts. Since there are no parts there's no need to replace one thing with another. No need to remove anything or add anything. You don't have to think about difficult things just let yourself soak it all in. For Nakata nothing could be better.”

“I turned faceup on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-colored sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of the stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.”

“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.”

“Se chove, as plantas florescem; se não há chuva, secam e morrem. Os insectos são comidos pelas lagartixas, por sua vez devoradas pelos pássaros. Todos acabam por morrer e, depois de mortos, ficam ressequidos. Uma geração desaparece, outra toma o seu lugar. É assim que as coisas se passam. Há muitas maneiras de viver. Há muitas maneiras de morrer. Isso, porém, não tem qualquer importância. No fim, fica apenas o deserto. Só o deserto permanece verdadeiramente vivo.”

“I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.”

“That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution”

“Life is like a box of cookies.”

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.”

“The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them.”

“Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil--they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.”

“You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.”

“I live my life you live yours. If you're clear about what u want then you can live anyway you please. I don't give a damn what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care.”

“De maan heeft onze wereld langer dan wie ook gadegeslagen en van heel dichtbij. Alles wat er ooit op deze aarde is gebeurd, alle handelingen die er zijn verricht heeft de maan waarschijnlijk gezien. Maar hij houdt er zijn mond over dicht. Koud en correct als altijd draagt hij dat zware verleden met zich mee. Op de maan is geen lucht en ook geen wind. Een vacuüm leent zich er uitstekend toe herinneringen onbeschadigd te bewaren. Niemand is in staat om het hart van de maan te verzachten. Aomame pakte haar glas en dronk de maan toe.”

“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.”

“If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage”

“Their hearts, lost in thought, slowly tick away time. When we pass each other on the road, we listen to the rhythm of each other's breathing, and sense the way the other person is ticking away the moments.”

“It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.”

“I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it - A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.”

“Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.”

“Pero como siempre, las cosas nunca salen como uno desea. Es más, el mundo parecía conocer a la perfección qué era lo que él (Tengo) no deseaba”

“Where are you now?’Where was I now?Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.”

“I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.Its only confusing if you believe it has to make sense.”

“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?”

“For every theory there has to be counterevidence--otherwise science wouldn't progress.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.”

“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.”

“They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?”

“Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—-and for me, for writing as well.”

“Está empezando un nuevo día. Quizá sea un día como los demás, o quizá sea un día relevante que, por diferentes razones, quede grabado en la memoria. En cualquier caso, por el momento, todo el mundo tiene ante sí un hoja en blanco, sin nada escrito.”

“Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.”

“Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek a kind of fairness.”

“Becoming a different person might be hard, but taking on a different name is a cinch.”

“I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.”

“You don't get it" she said''Don't get what?"''We are one"''We are one?" Tengo asked with a shock.''We wrote the book together"Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri's fingers against his palm. ...''That's true. We wrote Air Crysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we'll be eaten together.”