The cook hates the waiter, and they both hate the customer.
Painting portraits for a living had taken me on a wide detour. Somehow I had to get time on my side once again.
People devote a lot of energy to thinking about things. Whether they want to or not. Yet in the end we all just have to wait – only time can tell how events play out. The answers lie ahead.
Naturally there should be a few lessons I should learn. The courage not to fear a change in one’s lifestyle, the importance of having time on your side.
It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.
Each of us had all the troubles we could carry. They rained down on us from the sky, and we raced around in a frenzy to pick them up and stuff them in our pockets. Why we did that stumps me, even now. Maybe we thought they were something else.
The most important things aren’t decided by percentages.
There is no one in this world who can’t be replaced.
It was really real, what I felt, but if I try to explain it in words, then it sort of starts to slip away.
Memang otakku tidak begitu cemerlang. Aku hanya rakyat biasa. Tapi penopang kehidupan masyarakat itu rakyat biasa, lagi pula yang dieksploitasi juga rakyat biasa. Mana bisa disebut revolusi kalau mereka hanya menghambur-hamburkan istilah yang tidak dipahami oleh rakyat biasa? Apanya yang revolusi sosial!
If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of – that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.
I spend more time being confused than not.
Her skin retained a faint warmth, but it was already fading away.
Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all work the same way. Like women.
The breeze carried snatches of music from a large portable radio on the grass: a sugary song of love either lost or about to be.
The skin of my soul was no longer tender.
He was a tiny piece in a gigantic puzzle. But instead of having one fixed shape, his shape kept changing. And so – of course – he couldn’t fit anywhere. As he tried to sort out where he belonged, he was also given a set amount of time to gather the scattered pages of the timpani section of a score.
Look, the world is an inherently unfair place. I didn’t write the rules. It’s always been that way.
Many long months and years seemed to have passed since the room had made up its mind never to welcome any visitors.
Tengo listened to the silence, which seemed to offer several different meanings. It was not simply an absence of sound. The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself.