Haruki Murakami

“There’s no such thing as perfect writing. Just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom.

This puts me in mind of how refreshing water looks after someone's sprinkled it in a tiny hollow outside on a summer day.

A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time

The air was damp and stagnant, with a hint of something suspicious, as if countless ears were floating in the air, waiting to pick up a trace of some conspiracy

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself."

So I have to make it on my own. I have to get stronger—like a stray crow. That's why I gave myself the name Kafka. That's what Kafka means in Czech, you know—crow."

I've always been a great fan of the Chunichi Dragons, he thought, but what are the Dragons to me, anyway? Say they beat the Giants—how's that going to make me a better person? How could it? So why the heck have I spent all this time getting worked up like the team was some extension of myself?