What makes us most normal,” said Reiko, “is knowing that we’re not normal.
Most of these university types are total phonies. They’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out they don’t know something. They all read the same books and they all throw around the same words, and they get off listening to John Coltrane and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that ‘revolution’?
Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr Wind-up Bird? They’re nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts.
As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn’t much of a difference to begin with, he though, maybe we just decided, for convenience’s sake, to insist on a difference.
They knew the difference between thoroughness and overkill. It was like Jay Gatsby’s library: the books were real, but the pages were uncut.
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close are we able to come to that person’s essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
The further we traveled in the darkness, the more I began to feel estranged from my body. I couldn’t see it, and after a while, you start to think the body is nothing but a hypothetical construct.
What’s this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. Really.
Not all guns have to be fired. A pistol is just a tool and where I am living is not a story book world. It’s a real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.
Time flows in a strange way on Sundays.
One foot in front of the other. Repeat as often as necessary to finish.
I probably still haven’t completely adapted to the world. I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t the real world. The people, the scene: they just don’t seem real to me.
As long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside.
Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.
Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star. It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.
If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it – to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once.
Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.
I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.