His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias was an important element of truth.
Tsukuru felt his chest tighten with a disconsolate, stifling feeling, as if, before he’d realized it, he’d swallowed a hard lump of cloud.
Am I happy? If you asked me this, I’d have to say, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ Because dreams are, after all, just that: dreams.
And so, on the surface at least, I had become an ordinary girl again.
The religion brings many people together, so some degree of discipline is necessary, of course, but if you focus too much on formalities, you can lose sight of your original purpose. Things like precepts and doctrines are, ultimately, just expedients. The important thing is not the frame itself but what is inside the frame.
The truth is this: life is empty.
Once you get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own. And when your hopes are dashed you get disappointed, and disappointment leads to a feeling of helplessness. You get careless and let your guard down.
From here on out, I’m the one in charge. I’m the one who decides what’s good and what’s bad – and which way we’re headed. And people had better remember that.
Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds.
I always feel like I’m in someone else’s body with someone else’s soul stuffed inside.
If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn’t like to be half of what I should be.
When all is said and done, it is my life.
But what did you do to discover this painting?” Menshiki asked me. “Discover?” “It was you who did this painting, of course. You created it through your own power. But you also discovered it. You found this image buried within you and drew it out. You unearthed it, in a way. Don’t you think so?
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.
It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don’t think you have a particularly dark character.
Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes.
The strange sense of being disassembled.
However, like a piece of tracing paper slipping away, everything had, little by little, become irreparably different than it had been in the past.
A smile played around Aomame’s straight lips. People were focused on her actions. No one was surprised to see her pull a gun out of her bag – or at least they did not show surprise on their faces. Maybe they didn’t believe it was a real gun. ‘It is, though,’ Aomame told them mentally. Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at her cerebrum – the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided.
And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. I’ve had that experience myself. But don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality.