[quotes] Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami 2005

  

[I am so puzzled. I think this book is about obsessions and being stuck on a memory or a loss or a prophecy. How we become obsessed with things we cannot change and become empty shells - giving our contents to feed the past. Perhaps the opening of the stone offers opportunities to people living this half life to fully give themselves to their obsession or to finally escape and live a full life. But I could be totally wrong. And now I have a dream of opening a private library open to the public and serve community meals.]

"After changing into shorts and a T-shirt in the locker room, I do some stretching exercises. As my muscles relax, so do I. I'm safe inside this contained called me. With a little click, the outlines of this being - me - fit right inside and are locked neatly away. Just the way I like it. I'm where I belong."

"'You can appreciate Schubert if you train yourself. I was the same way when I first listened to him - it bored me easily. It's only natural for someone your age. In time you'll appreciate it. People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring. Go figure. For me, I might have the leisure to be bored, but not to grow tired of something. Most people can't distinguish between the two."

"Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just like we see with Eichmann."

"I yank my headphones and listen. Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear."

"There are lots of books on the shelf I'd like to read, still plenty of food. But I know I'm just passing through and will have to leave before long. This place is too calm, too natural - too complete. I don't deserve it. At least not yet."

"She still smiles from time to time, definitely a charming smile, but it's always limited somehow, a smile that never goes beyond the moment."

"It's Monday and the library's closed. The library is quiet enough most of the time, but on a day like this when it's closed it's like the land that time forgot. Or more like a place that's holding its breath, hoping time won't stumble upon it."

"'The kind that T.S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heatless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.'"

"'Symbolism and meaning are two different things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.'"

"'The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.'"

"'Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.'"

"'The strength I'm looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes,  misunderstandings.'"

"As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird... People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me - and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become."

"Beethoven, he learned, was a proud man who believed absolutely in his own abilities and never bothered to flatter the nobility. Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world, he thought political power and wealth served only one purpose: to make art possible."

"I'm better prepared, so I'm not as afraid. I'm nervous, sure, but my heart's not pounding. Curiosity's what's leading me on. I want to know what lies down this path. Even if there's nothing there, I want to know that. I have to know. Memorizing the scenery as I pass by, I move steadily forward, step by careful step."

"Huge black mosquitoes buzz me like reconnaissance patrols, aiming for the exposed skin around my eyes. When I hear the buzz I brush them away or squash them. Whenever I smush one it makes a squish, already bloated with blood it's sucked out of me. It feels itchy only later. I wipe the blood off my hands on the towel around my neck."

"'Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.'"