It felt like he’d opened the lid to invite me, personally, to the world underground. No one else, just me.
No place has everything you need.
If you need me, use me.
And then it struck him what lay buried far down under the earth on which his feet were so firmly planted: the ominous rumbling of the deepest darkness, secret rivers that transported desire, slimy creatures writhing, the lair of earthquakes ready to transform whole cities into mounds of rubble. These, too, were helping to create the rhythm of the earth. He stopped dancing and, catching his breath, stared at the ground beneath his feet as though peering into a bottomless hole.
Something presses on a part of the brain and makes people say all kinds of nasty things. You know it’s just part of the sickness, but still, it hurts. Wha do you expect? Here I am, working my fingers to the bone for them, and they’re saying all this terrible stuff to me.
The world is like a great big overcoat, and it needs pockets of various shapes and sizes.
To put a finer point on it, Tokai was always a casual number-two lover, a convenient rainy-day boyfriend, or else a handy partner for a casual fling.
As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.
You’ve wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out.
Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.
You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don’t want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life’s natural flow. I’m just a powerless and imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how wonderful life can be! Believe me, it’s true! So stop what you’re doing this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!
There is a point is everybody’s life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes you have to grab it by the tail. Grab it hard, and never let go. There are some people who are able to, and others who can’t.
Tsukuru didn’t know what to say. The strength drained out of him. Like water leaking from a small hole in a bag.
And one of the privileges given to those who’ve avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
They sat back down again, across from each other at the table, and took turns opening up about what was in their hearts. Things they had not put into words for ages, things they’d been holding back deep in their souls. Removing the lids on their hearts, pulling open the doors of memory, revealing honest feelings, as the other, all the while, listened quietly.
But what I think is, no matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” “That’s true,” Miss Saeki said. “It hurt more and more to hold on to them, but I never wanted to let them go, as long as I was alive. It was the only reason I had to go on living, the only thing that proved I was alive.” Nakata.
Changes in a person’s feelings aren’t regulated by custom, logic, or the law. They’re fluid, unstable, free to spread their wings and fly away. Like migratory birds have no concept of borders between countries.
I spent the whole bullet-train ride mentally reviewing my eighteen years and realised that almost everything that had happened to me was pretty embarrassing. I’m not exaggerating. I didn’t want to remember any of it – it was so pathetic. The more I thought about my life up to then, the more I hated myself.
Funny isn’t it? I can get almost anything I want. Except the one thing I want the most.
It had no ornament, no defining characteristic. No argument, no message. It fulfilled its structural role but aspired to nothing further.