• “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
• “I take a deep breath, fill my lungs with air, and manage to inhale that lump of emotion.”
• “The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura," he says into my ear. "But for you and me this library alone is no metaphor. It's always just this library. I want to make sure we understand that.”
• “Shouldering my backpack, I walk to the local station”
• raunchy
• “Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip 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.”
• “It starts to rain just after we pass Nagoya. I stare at the drops streaking the dark window. It was raining the day I left Tokyo, too. I picture rain falling in all sorts of places—in a forest, on the sea, a highway, a library. Rain falling at the edge of the world. I close my eyes and relax, letting my tense muscles go loose. I listen to the steady hum of the train. And then, without warning, a warm tear spills from my eye, runs down my cheek to my mouth, and, after a while, dries up. No matter, I tell myself. It's just one tear. It doesn't even feel like it's mine, more like part of the rain outside.
• “Every one of us is losing something precious to us," he says after the phone stops ringing. "Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. 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 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.”
• “I stand in the clearing in front of the cabin and gaze up at the sky. The world around me is suddenly filled with brilliant sounds—birds chirping, water gurgling down the stream, wind rustling the leaves. All faint, but to me it's like corks have been pulled from my ears and now everything sounds so alive, so warm, so close. Everything's mixed together, but still I can make out each individual sound. I look down at the watch on my wrist, and it's working again. Digital numbers flash on the green screen, changing each minute like nothing had ever happened. It's 4:16.”
• “White sands of time slip through the girl's slim fingers. Waves crash softly against the shore. They rise up, fall, and break. Rise up, fall, and break. And my consciousness is sucked into a dim, dark corridor.”
• “It's an opportune moment.”
• Toro said diffidently
• “The kitchen had only a rudimentary assortment of pots and pans”
• “The stone, of course, withheld comment.”
• “The stone maintained its stony silence.”
• nonplussed
• nothing slowed down its inexorable advance”
• “He knew he was about as close to death as you can get, the abyss of nothingness gaping open right before his eyes.”
• “You know what, Gramps?" he went on. "I think that whenever something happens in the future I'll always wonder—What would Mr. Nakata say about this? What would Mr. Nakata do? I'll always have someone I can turn to. And that's kind of a big deal, if you think about it. It's like part of you will always live inside me. Not that I'm the best container you could find, but better than nothing, huh?”
• “sneakers that have seen better days”
• “This was always an important place for the two of us, and still is. It's like there's a power here that recharges us. A quiet sort of power. You know what I mean?”
• “It's not something you can get across in words. The real response is something words can't express.”
• “That's another thing that words can't explain. One of those things that's neither a yes or a no answer.”
• “People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even. ”
• “We're silent again. Silence doesn't seem to bother him a bit. Or me either. I just sit there, my mind a blank, listening to the music on the radio. He's staring at the road straight ahead.”
• “I think this was all predestined," Oshima says. "I knew it, and so did she. Though when it actually happens, of course, it's pretty hard to take.”
• I exchange my smelly T-shirt for a gray one from the drawer that smells like sunlight and soap.
• “We're sitting across from each other, her hands neatly lined up on the table, palms down. Her ten little resolute fingers are there, real objects before me. Directly across from her, I catch each tiny flutter of her eyelashes, count each blink of her eyes, watch the strands of hair swaying over her forehead. I can't take my eyes off her.”
• “It's like when you're in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you're in the rain, you're a part of the rain. When you're in the morning, you're a seamless part of the morning. When you're with me, you become a part of me.”
• “After the girl leaves, I sit by the window holding my hand out in the morning sun, its shadow falling on the windowsill, a distinct five-finger outline. The bee stops buzzing around and quietly lands above the windowpane. It seems to have some serious thinking to do. And so do I.”
• “Just one thing," she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. "I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets.”
• “Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence. A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. ”
• “You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago. The wind was blowing, there were white puffy clouds, and it was always summer.”
• “I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair.

I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. ”

• “She stands up, goes to the window, and looks outside. The sun's still high in the sky. The bee's still asleep. Miss Saeki holds up a hand to shield her eyes and looks at something far off, then turns to face me. ”
• “Mother, you say. I forgive you. And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles.”
• “My mind is someplace far away, though my body is still right here—just like a living spirit. ”
• “And she leaves. She opens the door and, without glancing back, steps outside and closes the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. Quickly she vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot to say something and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence, like a hollow.”
• “The sun shines down. I go back to the table and sit down. Her cup is sitting there, with a bit of tea left in it. I leave it where it is, without touching it. The cup looks like a metaphor. A metaphor of memories that, before long, will be lost.”
• “For a moment I'm frozen to the spot. I have to go back, no matter what. I could at least stay there until evening, when the young girl with the canvas bag will visit me. If you need me, I'll be there. I get a hot lump in my chest and a powerful magnet's pulling me back toward the town. My feet are buried in lead and won't budge. If I go on I'll never see her again. I come to a halt. I've lost all sense of time. I want to call out to the soldiers in front of me, I'm not going back, I'm staying. But no voice comes out. Words have no life in them. I'm caught between one void and another. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. I don't even know what I want anymore. I'm standing alone in the middle of a horrific sandstorm. I can't move, and can't even see my fingertips anymore. Sand as white as pulverized bones wraps me in its grip.”
• “I turn a corner and that little world in the hills vanishes, swallowed up in dreams. Now I just focus on making it through the forest without getting lost. Not wandering from the path. That's what's important now, what I have to do.”
• “They're not out of breath at all after our breathless rush through the woods.”
• “Don't forget what I told you about bayonets," the tall soldier says. "When you stab the enemy, you've got to twist and slash, to cut his guts open. Otherwise he'll do it to you. That's the way the world is outside.”
• “He rubbed the stone while relating his amorous adventures.”
• “He had no idea if the stone was listening, to the music or to him, but he forged ahead anyway.”
• “The boy named Crow flew in large, languid circles above the forest. After inscribing one, he'd fly off to another spot and carefully begin another, identical circle, each invisible circle following another in the air only to vanish. Like a reconnaissance plane, he scanned the forest below him, looking for someone he couldn't seem to locate. Like a huge ocean, the forest undulated beneath him and spread to the horizon in a thick, anonymous cloak of interlaced branches. The sky was covered with gray clouds, and there was neither wind nor sunlight.”
• “Resting on the branch, he gazed, unblinking, expressionless, at the man. Occasionally he'd incline his head to one side.”
• “Do you know what limbo is? It's the neutral point between life and death. A kind of sad, gloomy place. Where I am now, in other words—this forest. I died, at my own bidding, but haven't gone on to the next world. I'm a soul in transition, and a soul in transition is formless. I've merely adopted this form for the time being.”
• “No matter how determined you may be, eliminating me's impossible for the likes of you.”
• “The hills to the east are barely edged in a faint light.”
• “for some unfathomable reason the thing stopped while I was sleeping”
• “All the while she's steadily gazing at me.”
• “Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one. The pain is an anchor, mooring me here. ”
• “I want to say something, but when I'm with her words no longer function as they're supposed to. Or maybe the meaning that ties them together has vanished?”
• “I stare at my hands and think of the dogwood outside the “window, glinting in the moonlight. That's where the blade that's stabbing me in the heart is.”
• “I stand in the doorway long after she's disappeared, gazing vacantly at the scenery outside. There's no moon or stars in the sky. Lights are on in a few other buildings, spilling out of the windows. The same antique, yellowish light that illuminates this room.”
• “Dark shadows widen their grip on the world outside. ”
• “Hoshino plopped down on the living-room sofa, trying to pass the time. He didn't feel like listening to music or reading. Twilight came on, the room by degrees turning dark, but he didn't even get up to switch on the light. He felt completely drained, and once ensconced on the sofa couldn't rouse himself enough to get up. Time came slowly and passed slowly, so leisurely that at times he could swear it had stealthily doubled back on itself.”
• “ just a matter of time”
• “It makes a big difference whether or not you have a chance to steel yourself for the inevitable. ”
• “Nakata's checked out for good, Hoshino thought, and that's a fact.”
• “The clouds had blown away sometime during the night, leaving an unbroken sunny summer sky. The stone was in its customary spot next to the sofa. It didn't sleep a wink, didn't wake up, just crouched there, unmoving, the entire night.”
• “I'm dying of thirst. He unhooks the canteen from his waist and hands it to me. I take a few gulps of the lukewarm water. The liquid quenches every pore of my body.”
• “it's like a foreign language I can't decipher. I give up, open my eyes, and gaze out again at this brand-new world before me.”
• “These signs reconfigure themselves, the metaphors transform, and I'm drifting away, away from myself. I'm a butterfly, flitting along the edges of creation. Beyond the edge of the world there's a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And hovering about there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”
• “The sky's still a mass of gray clouds. The soldiers and I walk down the road but don't pass a single person.”
• “Needless to say, nobody like that ever showed up in my life.”
• “I flash back to reality. ”
• “After drinking all that milk now I get sleepy. An overwhelming, almost nauseous sleepiness comes over me. My thoughts slow down, and finally stop, like a train pulling into a station, and I can't think straight anymore, like the core of my body's coagulating. I walk into the bedroom, make a tangle out of getting my pants and shoes off, then slump down on the bed, bury my face in the pillow, and close my eyes. The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell. I quietly breathe it in, breathe it out, and fall asleep before I know it.”
• “A sad, distressing scene—though it's hard to believe that just drinking milk could be so sad. ”
• “The scene comes into focus, and I hear a familiar melody. "Edelweiss." Out in the kitchen there's a faint, intimate clattering of pots and pans. Light spills into the bedroom through a crack in the door, forming a yellow line on the floor. Kind of an old-fashioned, powdery yellow light.”
• “She gives me a small, warm smile, and a powerful emotion overwhelms me, like the whole world's been turned upside down, like everything tangible had fallen apart but has now been put back together. But this girl is no illusion, certainly no ghost.”
• “The fragrance brings back fond memories. ”
• “She looks fixedly at me but doesn't answer. It's like my question's taken a wrong turn and been sucked into some nameless space.”
• “Sacrifice myself?" That certainly has a strange ring to it. I can't quite grasp it.”
• “I'm in love with Miss Saeki," I say. The words slip out naturally. "I know that," the boy named Crow says curtly.”
• “Take me inside," I answer without a moment's hesitation.”
• “Alone in the room with the corpse, Hoshino noticed how, very gradually, all sounds disappeared. How the real sounds around him steadily lost their reality. Meaningful sounds all ended up as silence. And the silence grew, deeper and deeper, like silt on the bottom of the sea. It accumulated at his feet, reached up to his waist, then up to his chest. He watched as the layers of silence rose up higher and higher. He sat down on the sofa and gazed at Nakata's face, trying to accept the fact that he was really gone. It took him a long time to accept it. As he sat there the air began to feel strangely heavy and he could no longer tell if his thoughts and feelings were really his.”
• “Nakata had passed away calmly in his sleep, most likely not thinking of anything. His face was peaceful, with no signs of suffering, regret, or confusion. Very Nakata-like, Hoshino concluded. But what his life had really meant, Hoshino had no idea. Not that anybody's life had more clear-cut meaning to it. What's really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn't amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die. These thoughts ran through his head as he stared at the face of the dead old man.”
• “The old man had already crossed the great divide.”
• “Steady as she goes seemed to be today's theme for the world.”
• “One expressionless moment after another ticked by. Noon came and went, the afternoon quietly reeling into twilight.”
• “So we walk on for a while without talking, at a less blistering pace than before.”
• “I try to figure out what he means. But what with the exhaustion, sweat, and hypnotic effect of this repetitive journey through the woods, my brain can't form a coherent thought.”
• “Guts. Oshima told me once that intestines are a metaphor for a labyrinth. My head's full of all kinds of thoughts, all intertwined and tangled. I can't tell the difference between one thing and another.”
• “They don't say a thing, but their eyes speak volumes. This is the place, they're telling me. The place you're going to enter. I stand there with them and gaze out at that world.
• “The buildings are all expressionless, built less for beauty than to withstand the elements.”
• “A deep silence settled over the room.”
• “It's what I've been hoping for, Mr. Nakata, for a long time. Something I longed for in the past, what I'm longing for right now. No matter how I tried, though, I couldn't grasp it. I simply had to sit and wait for that time—now, in other words—to come. It wasn't always easy, but suffering is something I've had to accept.”
• “Nakata's lived a long time, but as I said, I don't have any memories. So this 'suffering' you talked about I don't rightly understand. But what I think is—no matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories." "That's true," Miss Saeki said. "It hurt more and more to hold on to them, but I never wanted to let them go, as long as I was alive. It was the only reason I had to go on living, the only thing that proved I was alive." Nakata nodded silently.”
• “My life ended at age twenty. Since then it's been merely a series of endless reminiscences, a dark, winding corridor leading nowhere. Nevertheless, I had to live it, surviving each empty day, seeing each day off still empty. During those days I made a lot of mistakes. No, that's not correct—sometimes I feel that all I did was make mistakes. I felt like I was living at the bottom of a deep well, completely shut up inside myself, cursing my fate, hating everything outside. Occasionally I ventured outside myself, putting on a good show of being alive. Accepting whatever came along, numbly slipping through life. I slept around a lot, at one point even living in a sort of marriage, but it was all pointless. Everything passed away in an instant, with nothing left behind except the scars of things I injured and despised
• “Eventually Miss Saeki closed her eyes, quietly giving herself over to memories. There was no more pain there, for someone had siphoned it off forever. The circle was once again complete. She opens the door of a faraway room and finds two beautiful chords, in the shape of lizards, asleep on the wall. She gently touches them and can feel their peaceful sleep. A gentle wind is blowing, rustling the old curtain from time to time. A significant rustling, like some parable. She's wearing a long blue dress. A dress she wore somewhere a long time ago. Its hem swishes faintly as she walks. The shore is visible outside the window. And you can hear the sound of waves, and someone's voice. There's a hint of the sea in the breeze. And it's summer. Always it's summer. Small white clouds are etched against the azure sky.”
• “I needed her, he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn't able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.”
• “Minus my hard shell, just flesh and bones, I head for the core of the labyrinth, giving myself up to the void.

The music that had been playing in my head has vanished, leaving behind some faint white noise like a taut white sheet on a huge bed. I touch that sheet, tracing it with my fingertips. The white goes on forever. ”

• Sometimes I can “catch a glimpse of the sky through the treetops. It's covered with an even, unbroken layer of gray clouds, but it doesn't look like it's going to rain. The clouds are still, the whole scene unchanging. Birds in the high branches call out clipped, meaningful greetings to each other. Insects buzz prophetically among the weeds.”
• “that house was a place where lots of things had died. Check that—were murdered.”
• “This forest is basically a part of me, isn't it? This thought takes hold at a certain point. 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 the fear in my own heart. The spiderweb stretched taut there is the spiderweb inside me. The birds calling out overhead are birds I've fostered in my mind. These images spring up in my mind and take root. Like I'm being shoved from behind by some huge heartbeat, I continue on and on through the forest. The path leads to a special place, a light source that spins out the dark, the place where soundless echoes come from. I need to see with my own eyes what's there. I'm carrying an important, sealed, personal letter, a secret message to myself. A question. Why didn't she love me?”
• “For years that question's been a white-hot flame burning my heart, eating away at my soul. ”
• “The birds screech above me again, and I look up at the sky. Nothing there but that flat, expressionless layer of gray clouds. No wind at all. I trudge along. I'm walking by the shores of consciousness. Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what's written there, between one wave and the next, but it's hard. Before I can read it the next wave's washed it away. All that's left are puzzling fragments.”
• “I'm watching the sun setting in the west, shadows slowly stealing over the world. In a world of time, nothing can go back to the way it was. The shadows' feelers steadily advance, eroding away one point after another along the ground, until my mother's face, there until a moment ago, is swallowed up in this dark, cold realm. That hardened face, turned away from me, is automatically snatched away, deleted from my memory.”
• “But after a while I take leave of myself. My soul sloughs off the stiff clothes of the self and turns into a black crow that sits there on a branch high up in a pine tree in the garden
• “But things in the past are like a plate that's shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?" I nod. You can never put it back together like it was. He's hit the nail on the head.”
• Crow replies pointedly.
• “You don't want to be at the mercy of things outside you anymore, or thrown into confusion by things you can't control. You've already murdered your father and violated your mother—and now here you are inside your sister. If there's a curse in all this, you mean to grab it by the horns and fulfill the program that's been laid out for you. Lift the burden from your shoulders and live—not caught up in someone else's schemes, but as you. That's what you want.”
• “And I wake up. I'm in bed, alone. It's the middle of the night. The darkness is as deep as it can be, all clocks lost within.”
• “I gulp down glass after glass of water, but nothing slakes my thirst. I feel so alone I can't stand it. In the darkness, in the middle of the night, surrounded by a deep forest, I couldn't be more alone. There are no seasons here, no light. I walk back to the bed, sit down, and breathe a huge sigh. The darkness wraps itself around me.”
• “There was no telling what Nakata might say next, and he had to nip that possibility in the bud. ”
• “stopping at select spots to stare fixedly”
• “Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world”
• “tendencies became even more pronounced”
• “the extraordinary effort this required had a progressively deleterious effect on his life, for all humans have physical and emotional limits”
• “Freedom and the emancipation of the ego were synonymous. And art, music in particular, was at the forefront of all this. ”
• “We have an experience—like a chemical reaction—that transforms something inside us. When we examine ourselves later on, we discover that all the standards we've lived by have shot up another notch and the world's opened up in unexpected ways.”
• “Without those peak experiences our lives would be pretty dull and flat. Berlioz put it this way: A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.”
• “Nothing extraneous, altogether a highly refined, tasteful look.”
• “Miss Saeki's smile never failed the entire time. The more Hoshino watched her, though, the more confused he grew. She smiles and looks at us, he told himself, but she doesn't see anything. She's looking at us, but she's seeing something else. Though all the time she was giving the tour, even if her mind was elsewhere, she was perfectly polite and kind. Whenever he asked a question, she gave a kind, easy-to-follow response. It's not like she's doing this against her will or anything. A part of her enjoys doing a meticulous job. / But her heart isn't in it.”
• “Lips set in a determined look, Nakata was already hurrying toward the main entrance”
• “Undaunted, Nakata strode down the corridor and into the study.”
• “For a while Miss Saeki silently studied the old man's face. Her eyes shone with a noncommittal light. She blinked a few times, then silently closed her book. She rested both hands on the desk and looked up again at Nakata. She looked undecided about how to proceed, but then gave a small nod.”
• “Sometimes they sound far away, sometimes right near by—the sense of distance expanding and contracting.”
• “The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I'm just scared of my own shadow.”
• “I try not to think about it. The more you think about illusions, the more they'll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion.”
• “Do people start wars out of anger? Or fear? Or are anger and fear just two aspects of the same spirit?”
• “You heard, but you didn't listen. You just forged on ahead.”
• “That curse is branded on your soul even deeper than before. You should realize that by now. That curse is part of your DNA. You breathe out the curse, the wind carries it to the four corners of the Earth, but the dark confusion inside you remains. Your fear, anger, unease —nothing's disappeared. They're all still inside you, still torturing you.”
• “Alone in such a deep forest, the person called me feels empty, horribly empty. Oshima once used the term hollow men. Well, that's exactly what I've become. There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying. There's no direction where I am, no sky, no ground. I think of Miss Saeki, of Sakura, of Oshima. But I'm light-years away from them. It's like I'm looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, and no matter how far I stretch out my hand, I can't touch them. I'm all alone in the middle of a dim maze. Listen to the wind, Oshima told me. I listen, but no wind's blowing. Even the boy named Crow has vanished.”
• “If only I could wipe out this me who's here, right here and right now. I seriously consider it. In this thick wall of trees, on this path that's not a path, if I stopped breathing, my consciousness would silently be buried in the darkness, every last drop of my dark violent blood dripping out, my DNA rotting among the weeds. Then my battle would be over. Otherwise, I'll eternally be murdering my father, violating my mother, violating my sister, lashing out at the world forever. I close my eyes and try to find my center.”
• “They sat down side by side on the sand, not speaking for a long time, watching the waves rise up like sheets being fluffed into the air and then, with a faint sound, break apart. Neither of them had been to the sea very often in their lives, and they feasted their eyes on the scene.”
• “Nakata gave a decisive shake of his head.”
• “The forest hasn't changed a bit—the same smell of grasses, birdcalls, babbling water in the brook, the rush of wind through the trees, the same shadows of rustling leaves. ”
• the clouds above me look really close. I feel nostalgic to see them again, for they've become a part of me.”
• “You don't know if she shares the same strong, pure feelings you have for her," Oshima comments. I shake my head. "It hurts to think about it." Oshima's silent for a time as he gazes out at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. "I know how you feel," he finally says. "But this is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.”
• “There's another world that parallels our own, and to a certain degree you're able to step into that other world and come back safely. As long as you're careful. But go past a certain point and you'll lose the path out. It's a labyrinth.”
• “It was the ancient Mesopotamians. They pulled out animal intestines—sometimes human intestines, I expect—and used the shape to predict the future. They admired the complex shape of intestines. So the prototype for labyrinths is, in a word, guts. Which means that the principle for the labyrinth is inside you. And that correlates to the labyrinth outside." "Another metaphor," I comment. "That's right. A reciprocal metaphor. 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. Most definitely a risky business.”
• “He brushes back his hair, gives an abbreviated wave, and is gone”
• “She knows all kinds of things you're clueless about, she's experienced a range of emotions you've never felt.”
• “You're in the middle of something wonderful, something so tremendous you may never experience it again. But you can't really understand how wonderful it is. That makes you impatient. And that, in turn, leads to despair. You try to picture what she's doing right now. It's Monday, and the library's closed. What does she do on her days off? You imagine her alone in her apartment. She does the laundry, cooks, cleans, goes out shopping—each scene flashes in your imagination. The more you imagine, the harder it gets to sit still here. You want to turn into a dauntless crow and fly out of this cabin, zoom out over these mountains, come to rest outside her apartment, and gaze at her forever.”
• “It doesn't have to be the real Miss Saeki—that fifteen-year-old girl would be fine. It doesn't matter what form she takes—a living spirit, an illusion—but you have to see her, have to have her beside you. Your brain is so full of her it's ready to burst, your body about to explode into pieces. Still, no matter how much you want her to be here, no matter how long you wait, she never appears. All you hear is the faint rustle of wind outside, birds softly cooing in the night. You hold your breath, staring off into the gloom. You listen to the wind, trying to read something into it, straining to catch a hint of what it might mean. But all that surrounds you are different shades of darkness. Finally, you give up, close your eyes, and fall asleep.”
• unobtrusive. “Turn away from it for a moment and every memory of what it looked like vanished. A notable achievement in the field of anonymity.”
• “Hoshino spent the afternoon listening to his new CD. The performance wasn't as spontaneous and memorable as the one he'd heard in the coffee shop. It was more restrained and steady, but overall not so bad. As he lay back on the couch and listened, the lovely melody got to him, the subtle convolutions of the fugue stirring up something deep inside.”
• “Hoshino shook his head listlessly.”
• “Never mind. Just a harmless joke.”
• “the map was a mass of yellow marks, the anonymous tires of the Familia having traversed every square inch of road in the city”
• “Chance is a scary thing, isn't it?”
• “My second day on the mountain passes by leisurely, seamlessly. The only thing that distinguishes one day from the next is the weather. If the weather was the same I couldn't tell one day from another. Yesterday, today, tomorrow—they'd all blur into one. Like an anchorless ship, time floats aimlessly across the broad sea.”
• “Spike heels clicking on the stairs, she walks up to the second floor, the sound reverberating through the stillness.”
• “Her calm smile, tinged with the long shadow of resignation. All these details seem so far away now—and no longer real.”
• “Tiring of these sexual fantasies, I wander outside and go into my usual exercise routine.”
• I sit down on the grass, lean back against a tree trunk, and gaze up at the round opening of sky through the branches. The edges of white summer clouds are visible. Up to this point, I'm safe. I can find my way back to the cabin. A maze for beginners—if this were a video game I've easily cleared Level 1. If I go any farther, though, I'll enter a more elaborate, more challenging labyrinth. The path gets narrower and I'll get swallowed up by the sea of ferns. I ignore this and forge on ahead.”
• “The trees tower higher and higher, the air growing denser by the minute. Up above, the mass of branches nearly blots out the sky.”
• “I look up at the patch of real sky above me a couple of times, just to convince myself I've made it back to the world I came from. Signs of summer—so precious now—surround me. Sunlight envelopes me like a film, warming me up. But the fear I felt clings to me like a clump of unmelted snow in the corner of a garden. My heart beats irregularly from time to time, and my skin still has a slightly creepy feeling.”
• “That night I lie there in the darkness, breathing quietly with my eyes wide open, hoping to catch a figure appearing in the dark. Praying for it to appear, and not knowing if prayers have any effect. Concentrating for all I'm worth, wanting badly for it to happen. Hoping that wanting it so badly will make my wish come true. But my wish doesn't come true, my desires are shot down.”
• “Time's been rewound, setting me down at a turning point.”
• “ Thick branches cut off my field of vision. There is no season here. ”
• “break free of its shell, show its face, and slough off its jelly-like coating. ”
• “I rest my palm against her pubic hair, gently letting my finger go in deeper. It's wet, invitingly wet.”
• she admonishes me.
• “He sank back in his chair and, for the first time in quite a while, felt completely at ease. Everything in the shop was calming, natural, easy to feel comfortable with.”
• “Hoshino closed his eyes, breathing in quietly, and listened to the intertwining of strings and piano. He'd hardly ever listened to classical music before, but it was soothing and put him in an introspective mood. Sunk back in his soft chair, eyes closed, lost in the music, a number of thoughts crossed his mind—mostly having to do with himself. But the more he thought about himself, the less reality his existence seemed to have. He began to feel like some meaningless appendage sitting there. I've always been a great fan of the Chunichi Dragons, he thought, but what are the Dragons to me, anyway? Say they beat the Giants—how's that going to make me a better person? How could it? So why the heck have I spent all this time getting worked up like the team was some extension of myself?”
• “I feel like I'm exactly where I belong. When I'm with Mr. Nakata I can't be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' apostles felt the same way. When I'm with the Buddha, I always feel I'm where I belong—something like that. Forget about culture, truth, all that junk. That kind of inspiration's what it's all about.”
• “But when he considered it now, the story started to take on a different undertone. Life's crappy, no matter how you cut it. He just hadn't understood that when he was little”
• “These thoughts occupied him till the music, which was helping him meditate, stopped playing.”
• “Reaching the pinnacle's important in everything”
• “Nakata was still asleep, his breathing quiet and regular.”
• “So these early works of Truffaut were over his head in spots, the pace, as you'd expect of older films, a bit sluggish. Still, he enjoyed the unique mood, the overall look of the films, how suggestively the characters' inner worlds were portrayed. ”
• “Pierre Fournier's one of my absolute favorite musicians. Like an elegant wine, his playing has an aroma and substance that warms the blood and gently encourages you. I always refer to him as Maestro Fournier out of respect. I don't know him personally, of course, but I've always felt like he's my mentor.”
• “Listening to Fournier's flowing, dignified cello, Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird... People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me—and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?”
• “Haydn was an enigmatic figure. Nobody really knows the amount of intense pathos he held inside him. In the feudal time he was born in, though, he was compelled to skillfully cloak his ego in submissiveness and display a smart, happy exterior. Otherwise he would have been crushed. A lot of people compare him unfavorably to Bach and Mozart—both his music and the way he lived. Over his long life he was innovative, to be sure, but never exactly on the cutting edge. But if you really pay attention as you listen, you can catch a hidden longing for the modern ego. Like a far-off echo full of contradictions, it's all there in Haydn's music, silently pulsating. Listen to that chord—hear it? It's very quiet—right?—but it has a persistent, inward-moving spirit that's filled with a pliant, youthful sort of curiosity.”
• “You've hit it right on the head. You find the same spirit animating Truffaut. A persistent, inward-moving spirit that's filled with a pliant, youthful sort of curiosity”
• “That's when I wake up. I look around, collecting the scattered bits of my consciousness.”
• “ tight-lipped about it”
• “His movements parallel everything so closely.”
• “A really strange turn of events. It started out weird and is getting even weirder as it goes along. Impossible to predict what'll happen next. One thing's for sure, though. Everything seems to be converging right here. The old man's path and yours are bound to cross”
• “For all I know she might be saddled with a disease like that.”
• “It's just that very quietly, very steadily, she's heading toward death. Or else death is heading toward her.”
• “There are a lot of things that aren't your fault. Or mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. Not the fault of Structuralism or the Third Industrial Revolution. We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn't have form. It's just a movement of air. You should listen carefully, and then you'll understand the metaphor.”
• “Nakata was still out like a light.”
• “So making your phone ring is a cinch. Piece of cake. Whether it's turned on or not makes not one jot of difference, my friend.”
• “Obviously in his own little world. Hoshino shook the old man's shoulder, pinched his nose, tugged at his ears, and finally roused him to the land of the living.”
• “What's going to happen to my sex drive if I'm all pooped out?”
• “I walk with her to the shore. We cut through a pine forest and walk down the sandy beach. The clouds are breaking up and a half moon shines down on the waves. Small waves that barely reach the shore, barely break. She sits down at a spot on the sand, and I sit down next to her. The sand's still faintly warm.”
• “We sit there looking at the scenery. The clouds shift and the moonlight dapples the sea. Wind blows through the pine forest, sounding like a crowd of people sweeping the ground at the same time. I scoop up some sand and let it slowly spill out between my fingers. It falls to the beach and, like lost time, becomes part of what's already there. I do this over and over.”
• “I put my arm around her. You put your arm around her. She leans against you. And a long spell of time passes.”
• “We're all dreaming, aren't we?" she says. / All of us are dreaming.”
• “You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake.”
• “She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally it's a part of you.”
• “She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. / And everyone's living in them.”
• “had the pensive look of someone thinking.”
• “Nakata wasn't particularly surprised to find the stone there. His mind adapted immediately to the new reality, accepted it, didn't question why it happened to be there. Figuring out cause and effect was never his strong suit.”
• “Finally he gave what might have been a sigh, stood up, opened the window, and stuck his face out. All that was visible was the rear of the building next door. A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spend one shabby day after another doing their shabby work. The kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building you find in any city, the kind Charles Dickens could spend ten pages describing. The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky. Regardless, it was going to rain soon.”
• “continued its languid walk and disappeared in the shadows of the building.”
• “cleaned out his ears”
• “His first-ever visit to a library had made him painfully aware of how little he knew. The amount of things he didn't know about the world was infinite. The infinite, by definition, has no limits, and thinking about it gave him a mild migraine.”
• “After washing up, he went to the toilet and took care of business as usual. This didn't take as long as his other ablutions. ”
• “ "There's going to be thunder today," he pronounced to no one in particular. He may have been addressing the stone. He punctuated this with a couple of nods.”
• “Around noon thunder rumbled dully off in the distance, and, as if waiting for a signal, it started sprinkling. Unimpressive thunder, a lazy dwarf trampling on a drum. Before long, though, the raindrops grew larger, and it was soon a regular downpour, wrapping the world in a wet, stuffy smell.”
• “You're out of kilter big-time, but you're somebody I trust. ”
• “Nakata's empty inside. I finally understand that. Nakata's like a library without a single book. It wasn't always like that. I used to have books inside me. For a long time I couldn't remember, but now I can. I used to be normal, just like everybody else. But something happened and I ended up like a container with nothing inside.”
• “Everybody has their shortcomings.”
• “Right then a few irregular flashes of light ripped through the sky, and a series of thunderclaps shook the earth to its core. It's like somebody just opened the lid to hell, Hoshino thought. One final clap of thunder boomed nearby and suddenly there was a thick, suffocating silence. The air was damp and stagnant, with a hint of something suspicious, as if countless ears were floating in the air, waiting to pick up a trace of some conspiracy. The two men were frozen, wrapped in the midday darkness. Suddenly the wind picked up again, lashing rain against the window. Thunder rumbled, but not as violently as before. The center of the storm had passed the city.”
• “scratched his earlobe in resignation”
• “Hoshino closed his eyes and summoned up every ounce of strength, concentrating it on this one action. This is it! he told himself. Now or never!”
• “The recoil sent Hoshino tumbling backward. He lay there, sprawled faceup on the tatami, gasping for air, his head filled with soft mud whirling round and round. ”
• “A deserted library in the morning—there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting quietly. ”
• “Sometimes I come to a halt and gaze at all the silent books on the stacks, reach out and touch the spines of a few. ”
• “I go through the machines in the usual order, my mind filled with Miss Saeki.”
• “Condensed sexual fantasies, Prince's slippery voice, quotes from all kinds of books—the whole confused mess swirls around in my brain, and my head feels like it's about to burst.”
• “I have some tea after I'm finished eating and watch the people hustling back and forth in front of the station. They're all headed somewhere. If I wanted to, I could join them. Take a train to some other place. Throw away everything here, head off somewhere I've never been, start from scratch. Like turning a new page in a notebook. I could go to Hiroshima, Fukuoka, wherever. Nothing's keeping me here. I'm one hundred percent free. Everything I need to get by for a while is in my backpack. Clothes, toilet kit, sleeping bag. I've hardly touched the cash I took from my father's study. But I know I can't go anywhere. "But you can't go anywhere, you know that very well," the boy named Crow says.”
• “And I'm just one of them, melting into the scenery. ”
• “ You shake your head. There's no way you can leave here. You aren't free. But is that what you really want? To be free?”
• “Sometimes," he repeats. "You know, if they had a contest for the world's shortest replies, you'd win hands down." "Perhaps." "Perhaps," Oshima says, as if fed up. "Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.”
• “Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They're dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn't fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.”
• “The strength I'm looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things—unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings”
• “I could mostly do whatever sparked my interest”
• “I can't really say, but something's happening. The air pressure, the way sounds reverberate, the reflection of light, how bodies move and time passes—it's all transforming, bit by bit. It's like each small change is a drop that's steadily building up into a stream.”
• “She closes her eyes, and tents her fingers on top of her desk. Like she's resigned to it, she opens her eyes again. "Who are you?" she asks. "And why do you know so much about everything?"

You tell her she must know who you are. I'm Kafka on the Shore, you say. Your lover—and your son. The boy named Crow. And the two of us can't be free. We're caught up in a whirlpool, pulled beyond time. Somewhere, we were struck by lightning. / But not the kind of lightning you can see or hear.”

• “The moon rises, the tide comes in. Seawater flows into a river. A branch of the dogwood just outside the window trembles nervously. ”
• “The massive bank of thunderclouds crossed the city at a lethargic pace, letting loose a flurry of lightning bolts as if probing every nook and cranny for a long-lost morality, finally dwindling to a faint, angry echo from the eastern sky. And right then the violent rain came to a sudden halt, followed by an unearthly silence. Hoshino stood up and opened the window to let in some air. The storm clouds had vanished, the sky covered once more by a thin membrane of pale clouds. All the buildings were wet, the moist cracks in their walls dark, like old people's veins. Water dripped off power lines and formed puddles on the ground. Birds flew out from where they'd sought shelter, chirping loudly as they vied for the bugs that were out themselves now that the storm had abated.”
• “I've never seen anyone fall asleep as fast as him, Hoshino thought admiringly.”
• insipid afternoon programs
• “He wandered down the streets, sniffing the post-rain scent in the air,”
• “I know you're going to like this girl. She's our top girl. Luscious breasts, skin like silk. A nice, curvy waist, hot and wet right where you like it, a regular sex machine. To use a car metaphor, she's four-wheel drive in bed, turbocharged desire, step on the gas, the surging gearshift in her hands, you round the corner, she shifts gears ecstatically, you race out in the passing lane, and bang! You're there—Hoshino's dead and gone to heaven.”
• “A veritable sex machine, Hoshino. Have yourself a ball”
• “She washed him carefully all over, then commenced to lick him, sliding into a totally artistic act of fellatio, doing things to him he'd never seen or heard of in his life. He couldn't think of anything else but coming, and come he did.”
• “man that was good." "How good?" "Like there's no past or future anymore." "The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
• “the girl remarked, slowly segueing into her next set of motions”
• “So, how was our little sex machine? Pretty good, I'll bet."

"She was great. No complaints by me. I got off three times. Volitionally speaking. I must've lost five pounds.”

• “Hegel believed that a person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness.”
• “Well, think of what I'm doing to you right now. For me I'm the self, and you're the object. For you, of course, it's the exact opposite—you're the self to you and I'm the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.”
• “What are you talking about, you dingbat? Have I ever lied to you? Do I just make up things? I told you I'd get you a supple young sex machine, and I kept my end of the bargain. At a bargain-basement price, too—only $120, and you were brazen enough to shoot off three times, no less. All that and you still doubt me?" "Don't blow a fuse! Of course I believe you. It's just that when things are going along a little too smoothly, I get a bit suspicious, that's all”
• “A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical.”
• “This might sound strange, but you're living in the real world, breathing real air, speaking real words. Talking with you makes me feel, for the time being, connected to reality. And that's really important to me now”
• “And once more, whether I like it or not, I'm swept away to that place. To that time. I sense a presence and open my eyes.”
• “I sense that something's different. Something in the air that disturbs the perfect harmony of our little world. I strain to see through the gloom. What is it? The wind momentarily picks up, and the blood coursing through my veins begins to feel strangely thick and heavy. The dogwood branches draw a nervous maze on the windowpane. Finally it comes to me. ”
• “I'm clutching my hands tightly beneath the covers, and my heart, unable to stand it anymore, starts pounding hard, beating out an unexpected, erratic rhythm.”
• “She looks at me for a while, quietly concentrating like when she's looking at the painting, and a thought hits me—the axis of time. Somewhere I don't know about, something weird is happening to time. Reality and dreams are all mixed up, like seawater and river water flowing together. I struggle to find the meaning behind it all, but nothing makes any sense.”
• “Thrown totally off balance, I feel like I'm being sucked into a time warp. And you're sucked into a time warp. Before you know it, her dream has wrapped itself around your mind. Gently, warmly, like amniotic fluid. ”
• “Where does your responsibility begin here? Wiping away the nebula from your sight, you struggle to find where you really are. You're trying to find the direction of the flow, struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But you can't locate the borderline separating dream and reality. Or even the boundary between what's real and what's possible. All you're sure of is that you're in a delicate position. Delicate—and dangerous. You're pulled along, a part of it, unable to pin down the principles of prophecy, or of logic. Like when a river overflows, washing over a town, all road signs have sunk beneath the waves. And all you can see are the anonymous roofs of the sunken houses.”
• “You close your eyes and your own dream begins. It's hard to tell how much time is passing. The tide comes in, the moon rises. And soon you come.”
• “A long time passes. I can't move. Every part of me is paralyzed. Paralyzed, or else maybe I just don't feel like trying to move. ”
• “All this takes place without a word passing between us. She hasn't said a thing since she entered the room. The only sounds are the creak of the floorboards, the wind blowing ceaselessly outside. The room breathing out, the windowpane shivering. That's the chorus behind me. Still asleep, she crosses the room and leaves. The door's open just a crack but she slips right out like a delicate, dreamy fish. Silently the door closes. I watch from the bed as she makes her exit, still unable to move. I can't even raise a finger. My lips are tightly sealed. Words are asleep in a corner of time.”
• “The wind blows clouds over, then scatters them away. The branches of the dogwood quiver, and countless knives flash in the darkness. The window is my heart's window, the door my soul's door. I lie there awake until dawn, gazing at the empty chair.”
• “Originally I don't have a name or a shape." "So you're kind of like a fart." "You could say that. Since I don't have a shape I can become anything I want.”
• “Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man." "What the—?" "A line from Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain. I doubt you've read it.”
• “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.”
• “Anton Chekhov put it best when he said, 'If a pistol appears in a story, eventually it's got to be fired.' What Chekhov was getting at is this: necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals, or meaning don't have anything to do with it. It's all a question of relationality. Chekhov understood dramaturgy very well.”
• “ I never felt that if I go somewhere else there'll be special things waiting for me. I just wanted to be somewhere else, that's all. Anywhere but there.
• “She looks down at her hands resting on the desk, a very detached look in her eyes.
• “Like a silvery moon at dawn, a smile rises to her lips.”
• “ I think where a person is born and dies is very important. You can't choose where you're born, but where you die you can—to some degree." She says all this in a quiet voice, staring out the window like she's talking to some imaginary person outside. ”
• “Miss Saeki returns her coffee cup to the saucer with a hard, neutral sound. She looks straight at me, but she's not really seeing me. She's gazing at some void, some blank space somewhere else. ”
• She rests her hands on the desk, one on top of the other. Faint traces of a smile remain
• “She closes her eyes. I gaze at her closed eyelids for a long time, and through them I can see the darkness that she's seeing. Odd shapes loom up in it, floating up only to disappear.
• “Like someone rising to the surface of the sea from deep below, she takes a deep breath. She searches for the words to say, but they lie beyond her grasp.”
• “I can't even raise a finger. My lips are tightly sealed. Words are asleep in a corner of time.”
• “. But metaphors can reduce the distance." "We're not metaphors." "I know," I say. "But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”
• “At a certain point I should have stopped living, but didn't. I knew life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it. So I ended up just marking time, wasting my life in pointless pursuits. I wound up hurting myself, and that made me hurt others around me. That's why I'm being punished now, why I'm under a kind of curse.”
• “It's like everything around me's in flux—like it all has a doubled meaning.” She ponders this. "That might not be true for me, though. For me, things might not be so nuanced. It might be more like all or nothing.”
• “She closes her eyes and sinks back into memories. ”
• “We attack the mound of paella, washing it down with Perrier.”
• “I have no idea. That's between Haydn and his wig. Nobody else would understand. Inexplicable, I imagine.”
• “Tell me, when you're alone do you sometimes think about your partner and feel sad?"

"Of course," he says. "It happens sometimes. When the moon turns blue, when birds fly south, when—" "Why of course?" I ask. "Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time. It's just a natural feeling. ”

• “How we stumble through our lives desperately fumbling for our other half. ”
• “the fact that I was drawn to this library, like fate reeling me in”
• “Another of my patented nods.
• “As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later." "But even if that happens, you've got to have a place you can retrace your steps to." "A place you can retrace your steps to?" "A place that's worth coming back to.”
• “My chest starts pounding again, like somebody's hammering a long nail into the walls surrounding it.”
• “When I was fifteen," Miss Saeki says with a smile, "all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody's reach. A place beyond the flow of time." "But there's no place like that in this world." "Exactly. Which is why I'm living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break." As if hinting at the flow of time, she's silent for a while. "But you know," she goes on, "when I was fifteen, I thought there had to be a place like that in the world. I was sure that somewhere I'd run across the entrance that would take me to that other world.”
• “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.”
• “Strong and independent? I'm neither one. I'm just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not. But I don't say anything.”
• “A tiny hammer in my head is pounding on a drawer somewhere, persistently. I'm trying to remember something, something very important—but I don't know what it is.”
• “By two o'clock, the storm lets up, and yellowish light begins to spill out between the clouds like a reconciliation has finally been reached. Water continues to drip down in the gentle sunlight.”
• “These two chords are what keep "Kafka on the Shore" from degrading into some silly pop song, give it a special depth and substance. ”
• “As I enjoy the music, I review the conversation we'd had that afternoon, trying to capture our exact words. "When I was fifteen, I thought there had to be a place like that in the world. I was sure that somewhere I'd run across the entrance that would take me to that other world.”
• “I breathe very quietly, waiting for the dawn. A cloud parts, and moonlight shines down on the trees in the garden. There are just too many coincidences. Everything seems to be speeding up, rushing toward one destination.”
• “My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.”
• “No matter where he found himself, he kept up the same pace. He was young, healthy, carefree, with nothing to fear.”