01c. 1949 ADBut in real life things don't go smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. It isn't always the case, but from experience I'd say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others. The messenger touches his hand to his cap and looks apologetic, but that does nothing to improve the contents of the message. It isn't the messenger's fault. No good to blame him, no good to grab him by the collar and shake him. The messenger is just conscientiously doing the job his boss assigned him. And this boss? That would be none other than our old friend Reality.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
02c. 1949 ADBut in real life things don't go so smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. It isn't always the case, but from experience I'd say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others. The messenger touches his hand to his cap and looks apologetic, but that does nothing to improve the contents of the message. It isn't the messenger's fault. No good to blame him, no good to grab him by the collar and shake him. The messenger is just conscientiously doing the job his boss assigned him. And this boss? That would be none other than our old friend Reality.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
03c. 1949 ADStill, though, I can’t be sure if the zoo as I recall it was really like that. How can I put it? I sometimes feel that it’s too vivid, if you know what I mean. And when I start having thoughts like this, the more I think about it, the less I can tell how much of the vividness is real and how much of it my imagination has invented.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
04c. 1949 ADTo what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
05c. 1949 ADYou’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
06c. 1949 ADBut you knoe, she's right. Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it's utterly precious.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
07c. 1949 ADWhat we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
08c. 1949 ADLook at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
09c. 1949 ADWhen you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out- that's the real world.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
10c. 1949 ADThe better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
11c. 1949 ADReality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that --by following language and a logic that appears consistent-- you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
12c. 1949 ADI wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
14c. 1949 ADOnce you’re lost, you panic. You’re in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, ‘cause when you get in the mood all you can think about is what’s right under your nose - that’s sex, all right.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
15c. 1949 ADIt's a funny thing sensing someone else's sex drive. After a while, you get to mistaking it for your own.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
16c. 1949 ADSex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn't lead to anythingHaruki Murakami / quote ↗
17c. 1949 ADMany are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
18c. 1949 ADAdults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
20c. 1949 ADYour heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
22c. 1949 ADIn the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
23c. 1949 ADExactly. When is comes to anything halfway important, you just don't get it. It's amazing to me that you can put a piece of fiction together''Yeah, well, that's a whole different thing.'(from Honey Pie)Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
24c. 1949 ADMemory is like fiction: or else it's fiction that's like memory.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
