Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore (2002)

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If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.

Haruki Murakami
You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble. I'm not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You've got to look ahead a bit or else you'll bump into something. You've got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what's ahead. That's critical, no matter what you're doing.

Haruki Murakami
Not that running away's going to solve everything. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything.

Haruki Murakami
There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order.

Haruki Murakami
Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload.

Haruki Murakami
Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?

Haruki Murakami
I've built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself

Haruki Murakami
The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn't going to be veryuseful in the real world, that's for sure.

Haruki Murakami
I'm not trying to imply I can keep up this silent, isolated facade all the time. Sometimes the wall I've erected around me comes crumbling down. It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes, before I even realize what's going on, there I am—naked and defenseless and totally confused. At times like that I always feel an omen calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent pool of water.

Haruki Murakami
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.

Haruki Murakami
Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face.

Haruki Murakami
Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.

Haruki Murakami
But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?

Haruki Murakami
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

Haruki Murakami
According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.

Haruki Murakami
Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love.

Haruki Murakami
I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell.

Haruki Murakami
You're afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination but you can't supress dreams.

Haruki Murakami
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.

Haruki Murakami
I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?

Haruki Murakami
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

Haruki Murakami
That's how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Haruki Murakami
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.

Haruki Murakami
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.

Haruki Murakami
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts.

Haruki Murakami