“You mean, machines are like humans?”
I shook my head. “No, not like humans. With machines, the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn’t go any further. With humans, it’s different. The feeling is always changing. Life if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It’s always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can’t do anything about it, you can’t control it. With my Subaru, it’s not so complicated.”
—Dance, Dance, Dance, Haruki Murakami
“Some people say that’s escapism. But that’s fine by me. I live my life, you live yours. It you’re clear about what you want, then you can live any way you please. I don’t give a damn about what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. That’s how I looked at things when I was your age and I guess that’s how I look at things now. Does that mean I have arrested development? Or have I been right all these years? I’m still waiting on the answer to that one.”
—Dance, Dance, Dance, Haruki Murakami
Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong, to become part of something. To have someone cry for me. From someplace distant, so very distant. From, ultimately, a dream. No matter how far I reach out, no matter how fast I run, I’ll never make it.
Why would anyone want to cry for me?
—Dance, Dance, Dance, Haruki Murakami
Maybe we shouldn’t meet again. Tengo stared up at the ceiling. Wasn’t it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-a tiny flame to cup one’s hands around and protect from the wind, a flame tat the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Hope
This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
“Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive…the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive….The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and become the devil. For it is just as sinful form the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.’
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil,” the man said.
“Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. and vice versa. Such was the way if the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. This is what I mean when I say that I must die in order to keep things in balance.”
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
What is Truth?
“Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.”
The man turned his neck several times before continuing.
“If a certain belief-call it ‘Belief A’-makes the life of that man or this woman appear to be something of deep meaning, then for them Belief A is the truth. If Belief B makes their lives appear to be powerless and puny, then Belief B turns out to be falsehood. The distinction is quite clear. If someone insists that Belief B is the truth, people will probably hate him, ignore him, or, in some cases, attack him. It means nothing to them that Belief B might be logical or provable. Most people barely manage to preserve their sanity by denying and rejecting images of themselves as powerless and puny.”
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
“I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend-not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself? Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I’m not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don’t know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Luck
“I’d like to wish you luck, but I’m afraid a good luck wish from me won’t do any good,” Tamaru said.
“Because you don’t believe in luck.”
“Even if I wanted to, I don’t know what it’s like,” Tamaru said. ” I’ve never seen it.”
—1Q84, Haruki Murakami
