You get right down to it, writing is no means to self-help. It’s scarcely a passing attempt at self-help.
As I was sipping the hot liquid, I realized that I had developed a kind of liking for this little man on the verge of death.
I was 20 myself. Once upon a time.
Maybe I am just an empty, futile person, he thought. But it was precisely because there was nothing inside of me that these people could find, even if for a short time, a place where they belonged. Like a nocturnal bird seeks a safe place to rest during the day in a vacant attic. The birds like that empty, dim, silent place. If that were true, then maybe he should be happy he was hollow.
My very existence, My life in the world seems like hallucination.
Each day was a carbon copy of the last. You needed a bookmark to tell one from the other.
Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed.
At the same time, though, I love writing. Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.
No one knows for certain what it means to die until they actually do it.
It’s as if you’d gambled away almost all your money and decided, What the hell, I’ll bet what’s left.
Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such.
Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth,” I answered honestly. “Sometimes, if I can’t feel something like the warmth of a woman’s skin, I get so lonely I can’t stand it.
One of a teacher’s important duties is to get children to be genuinely impressed.
I’m thinking it would be wonderful if I could follow you into that world where you’re going.” “And leave this world behind?” “That’s right,” she said. “It’s a boring old world anyway. I’m sure it’d be much more fun living in your consciousness.
She was not the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to systematize it... They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled.
She took Tsukuru’s business card, her whole face lighting up in a smile, then pushed an extension number on her phone as if pressing the soft nose of an oversized dog.
All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely.
May the life you lead be a good one, a life free of regrets.
You could go running all around here in the middle of the night and you’d never fall into the well. And as long as I stick with you, I won’t fall in, either.
But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls ‘hollow men’. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to.