- Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- "On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library."
- "Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."
- "I wasn't alone, but I was terribly lonely. Because I knew that I would never be happier than I was then. That much I knew for sure. That's why I wanted to go- just as I was- to some place where there was no time."
- "... asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime."
- "For me, though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine."
- "For me, inside this physical body – this defective container – the most important job is surviving from one day to the next. It could be simple, or very hard. It all depends on how you look at it."
- "Metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me."
- "I head off into the heart of the forest, a hollow man, a void that devours all that's substantial. There is nothing left to fear."
- "This forest is basically a part of me, isn't it?... The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self, and what seems threatening is just the echo of fear in my own heart."
- ...things in the past are like a plate that's shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?"
- "Chance encounters are what keeps us going."
- "The more you think about illusions, the more they'll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion."
- "...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 a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
- "If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets."
- Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
- " In the end... you might be better off going crazy."
- " No. What's this about God? Ms. Anno was a devoted Christian, but no thanks to her faith in God she ended up getting raped by Sakamochi. Ah, praise the Lord."
- "If we can't trust anyone, we'll lose."
- "When she looked drowsy and rested her cheeks on her hands, she was pretty.
- When she was watering flowers by the classroom window, the way she touched the leaves, she was pretty.
- When she dropped the baton at the annual field day and burst into tears afterwards, she was pretty.
- When she was hanging out during our breaks, listening to Yuka Nakagawa, holding her stomach as she burst out laughing, she was so pretty.
- Ah."
- "Yoshimi realized how wonderful it was to share a laugh with someone you loved. It might be considered trivial, but no, it was essential."
- "The only thing we can do now is run... We were born to run."
- "She always held the basic belief that betrayals happened all the time."
- "All that stuff about ghosts, the afterlife, cosmic power, sixth sense, fortune-telling, psychic powers- that's just the talk of fools who can only deal with reality by avoiding it."
- "Words were just as important to him as music."
- "...laughter is essential to maintain harmony, and that might be our only release."
- "You wear nice clothes, you seek respect, you make a lot of money, but what's the point? It's all pointless... But, you see, we still have emotions like joy and happiness, right? They may not amount to much. But they fill up our emptiness."
- "Please live. Talk, think, act. And sometimes listen to music... Look at paintings, allow yourself to be moved. Laugh a lot, and at times, cry. And if you find a wonderful girl, then you go for her and love her."
- "They were all gone. Not just everyone's lives, but so many other things were destroyed."
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- "Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings."
- "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart."
- "You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?"
- "Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?"
- "You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk."
- "...I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go."
- 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
- "Don't let appearances fool you, there's always only one reality."
- "Stuff I understand perfectly doesn't interest me."
- " It's not me but the world that's deranged."
- "... it's the most compelling hypothesis I can produce at the moment. I'll have to act accordingly to this one, I suppose, until a more compelling hypothesis comes along. Otherwise, I could end up being thrown to the ground somewhere."
- "I gained great pleasure from my body back then. I gave great pleasure with it, too... You have to enjoy it while you're still young. Enjoy it to the fullest. You can use the memories of what you did to warm your body after you get old and can't do it anymore."
- "This was not about the mere loss of her virginity but rather the sanctity of an individual human being's soul. No one had the right to invade such sacred precincts with muddy feet. And once it happened, that sense of powerlessness could only keep gnawing away at a person."
- "The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let's leave doubt for tomorrow."
- "When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen."
- "Wouldn't it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?"
- " Could I be in love with her? No, impossible... It just so happens that something inside her has physically shaken my heart."
jun 25 2015 ∞
jun 26 2015 +
jun 26 2015 +