Haruki Murakami

People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.

I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.

I wander though China. Without ever having boarded a plane. My travels take place here in the Tokoyo subways, in the backseat of a taxi... all of a sudden this city will start to go. In a flash, the buildings will crumble. Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leaching into everything it touches. Slowly, gradually, until nothing remains. No, this isn't a place for me.

Colours shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.

I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death.

I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.' Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.

But why should you be interested in me?" Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it-even if the person himself wants to stop it.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.

I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."_x000D_ _x000D_ Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.

People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.