With jealousy, a parasite takes root in your heart. It becomes a cancer that eats away at your soul.
Perhaps nothing can be certain in this world,” I said. “But at least we can believe in something.
Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason – or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you’re attracted to Soseki’s The Miner. There’s something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart – or maybe we should say the work discovers you. Schubert’s Sonata in D Major is sort of the same thing.
I was living someone else’s life, not my own. How much of this person I called myself was really me? And how much was not? These hands clutching the steering wheel – what percentage of them could I really call my own? The scenery outside – how much of it was real? The more I thought about it, the less I seemed to understand.
I miss her every now and then, but finally, she didn’t move me. I don’t know, sometimes I think I’ve got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it.
By the second week in September I reached the conclusion that a college education was meaningless. I decided to think of it as a period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom.
I don’t want to forget the last time you touched me.
The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike.
You’re seeking something, but at the same time running away for all you’re worth.
Like it or not, I’m here now, in the year 1Q84. The 1984 that I knew no longer exists. It’s 1Q84 now. The air has changed, the scene has changed. I have to adapt to this world-with-a-question-mark as soon as I can. Like an animal released into a new forest. In order to protect myself and survive, I have to learn the rules of this place and adapt myself to them.
He could well imagine what the moon had given her: pure solitude and tranquillity. That was the best thing the moon could give a person.
Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That’s what being tough is all about.
Sometimes our memory betray us.
You make it obvious you don’t care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry.
Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood.
I lie here by myself in the dark at two o’clock in the morning and think about that cell in the library. About how it feels to be alone, and the depth of the darkness surrounding me. Darkness as pitch black as the night of the new moon.
Cats know everything. Not like dogs.
People don’t always send messages in order to communicate the truth.
It’s strange, isn’t it? No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy.
Still, the moon stood out clearly against the sky. It hung up there faithfully, without a word of complaint concerning the city lights or the noise or the air pollution.