“This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.”

“Nobody would take the time and effort to hang a fake moon in a real sky.”

“Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”

“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.”

“I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.”

“It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”

“Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.”