01c. 1949 ADApril and May were painful, lonely months for me because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like this.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
02c. 1949 ADShe and I were bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that for us from the startHaruki Murakami / quote ↗
04c. 1949 ADHe stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
05c. 1949 ADI'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
06c. 1949 ADThen, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
07c. 1949 ADI could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
08c. 1949 ADIt might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly : I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two everyday running alone, not speaking to anyone as well as four of five hours at my desk, to be neither difficult or boring.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
09c. 1949 ADSince I'm a novelist I'm the opposite of you - I believe that what's most important is what cannot be measured. I'm not denying your way of thinking, but the greater part of people's lives consist of things that are unmeasurable, and trying to change all these to something measurable is realistically impossible.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
10c. 1949 ADThe whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
11c. 1949 ADI just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
12c. 1949 ADThe ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselvesHaruki Murakami / quote ↗
13c. 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. I feel as if I've wandered into a labyrinth. Has that ever happened to you?Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
14c. 1949 ADYou're afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility 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 suppress dreams.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
15c. 1949 ADOrdinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
16c. 1949 ADAnd you came to Finland to build a station?""No I came here on vacation to visit a friend.""That's good," the driver said. "Vacations and friends are the two best things in life.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
17c. 1949 ADFor a ten-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl to become good friends was not easy under any circumstances. Indeed, it might be one of the most difficult accomplishments in the world.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
18c. 1949 ADUnsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn't eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could evaporate any moment.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
20c. 1949 ADThat’s my dream. It’s always the same. Always. Every little detail. And every time I have it, it’s just as scary as the last.(…)It’s so real, I feel as if I’ve already died hundreds of times.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
21c. 1949 ADShe tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. 'Words turn into stone,' Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner's 'I'll Remember April.' Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
22c. 1949 ADI don't dream. Come to think of it, i haven't had any dreams in a long time.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
24c. 1949 ADThe third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly moving through time and space It didn't matter when or where this was All that mattered was this movement. Everything was fluid, and a specific meaning was born of that fluidity. But as she gave herself up to it, she found her body growing transparent. She could see through her hands to the other side. Her bones, organs, and womb became visible. At this rate she might very well no longer exist. After she could no longer see herself, Aomame wondered what could possibly come then. She had no answer.Haruki Murakami / quote ↗
