Quotes from Ry? Murakami

The death of someone close to you, he realized at that moment, was something you came to accept one concrete fact at a time.

The hotel stood at the tip of a promontory overlooking the Izu seashore. Its orange roof had appeared suddenly as they rounded a curve in the descending

The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there.

Poder elegir tu propio dolor; da un poco de miedo, pensó, pero también es maravilloso.

Sólo cuando de verdad veías las palabras desaparecer, te dabas cuenta de lo secas y muertas que estaban, como hojas marchitas o dinero viejo y desechado.

Justo antes de desaparecer, las palabras adquieren un olor nauseabundo y pulposo, como manojos de hierba muerta que el viento arremolina, formando pequeñas esferas secas, y se derraman del cerebro y de las cuerdas vocales, bajando por las células sanguíneas y los nervios hasta los rincones más remotos del cuerpo.

Just before words vanish they acquire a sickening pulpy smell, like clumps of dead grass whipped by the wind into dry little spheres, and they spill from the brain and the vocal cords, down through the blood vessels and nerves to the deepest, farthest corners of your body.

Y de nada serviría intentar analizar cómo lo había logrado. Desde el momento que pones algo así en palabras, lo pierdes. Las palabras y las combinaciones de palabras: cuanto más dependieras de ellas, menor era tu poder real.

sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked toward, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that

all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory.

It was as if he'd abandoned himself to his despair, but in fact, Aoyama knew, he was fervently searching for something. Something that, once found, would keep him from having to feel the pain of his wound. To just entrust oneself to time was to exterminate oneself, to temporarily accept a kind of death.

Good poets are those able to gaze into the darkness of their own hearts. A vivid or beautiful poem is not necessarily a good poem. Poetry that doesn't stand side by side with the reader has no real power.

Allmählich wurde mir klar, warum Frank auf so eine dreiste Weise morden konnte, ohne verhaftet zu werden. Weil in unserem Land niemand Notiz von Fremden nimmt. Ob das in Amerika auch so war?

Find something that, when you're doing it, makes you feel like you don't have anywhere to go. If you don't find it, you'll end up having to go somewhere you don't want to.

When people lose control of their emotions, they tend to seek absolute satisfaction from the object of their fury. And since absolute satisfaction does not exist in this world, I knew she was going to rave on until she reached a state of exhaustion, and a certain queer sense of fulfillment.

What's good about Americans, if I can generalize a little, is that they have a kind of open-hearted innocence. And what's not so good is that they can't imagine any world outside the States, or any value system different than their own.

She was an ordinary person. But by 'ordinary' I just mean that she didn't have any need to dramatize herself. It's not a criticism. I don't think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person's character. If anything, it's a defect, especially when it's coupled with a need to compete.

I was glad I'd chosen this time of day to meet. Broad daylight doesn't lend itself to intimate personal confessions.

Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it—slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone...

I've wondered about that before, why is it that so much Korean food is spicy? Korea has an incredibly rich culture, but history has been cruel to the people ... But no matter how bad your situation is, you need to eat. And spicy food is a powerful ally when your reserves of courage and energy are low because it stimulates your appetite.

The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don't know what it is that's most important to them, or they know but don't have the power to go after it.

De toda esa miríada negra, cabalgándose y atropellándose, hacía una forma informe e inquietante, y me di cuenta, de súbito, que mi cuerpo estaba cubierto de piel de gallina. En la oscura pantalla, mis ojos turbios se reblandecieron como metal a punto de derretirse, y en voz baja le dije a aquel yo al borde de la licuefacción: '¿quién eres tú? ¿de qué estás hecho?

No one gets drunk in order to raise their moral standards.

Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary, deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally.