by Haruki Murakami

This is the first book I finished reading this year, I have actually read it before. I just decided to reread it because I was planning to watch the film adaptation. This novel makes me feel infinitely nostalgic and sad. 

I plan on reading more this year, and as I finished reading every single book, I decided I would post it here along with some excerpts that really got to me while reading. I plan on doing this with every film I get to watch too. This is a good start. Hopefully I can continue this all through out this year, and the next years to come.

-“I was thinking  about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

-“Don’t you see? It’s not just possible for one person to watch over another person forever and ever. I mean, suppose we got married.

 You’d have to work during the day. Who’s going to watch over me while yo’re away? Or if you go on a business trip, who’s going to watch over me then? Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives?

What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of relationship would that be? Sooner or later you’d get sick of me. You’d wonder what you were doing with your life, why you were spending all your time babysitting this woman. I couldn’t stand that. It wouldn’t solve any of my problems.”

-“It’s been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words- the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can’t touch her.”

-“Death exists not as the opposite but as a part of life.”

-“Naoko asked me one time- just once- if I had a girl I liked. I told her about the one I had left behind in Kobe. She was nice, I said, I enjoyed sleeping with her, and I miss her every now and then, but finally she didn’t move me. I don’t know, sometimes I think I’ve got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.”

-“That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the worst of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven’t you noticed Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap.”

-“(the world was full of pairs of girls)”.

-“Waiting for your answer in one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At lest let me know whether or not I hurt you.”

-“So I’m not mad after all! I thought I looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They tell me I look like a concentration camp survivor. What’s this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girl s with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least 250 unclassy girls with long hair. Really.”

-“A gentleman is someone who does not do what he wants to do but what he should do.”

-“I’d love to cook a stew for you but I have not pot. I’d love to knit a scarf for you, but I have no wool. I’d love to write a poem for you, but I have no pen.” “It’s called I have nothing”,Midori announced. It was a truly terrible song, both words and music.”

-“Somewhere between “not enough’ and “not at all’. I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted t know what it was like to get my fill of it- to be fed so much love I couldn’t take anymore. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up or beg for something, they’d just shove me away and yell at me. “No! that costs too much!’ It’s all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who will love me unconditionally 365 days a year. I was still at primary school at the time, but I made up my mind once and for all.”

-“I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.” “Waiting for the perfect love?” 

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you want to eat strawberry shortbread.

And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy one for me.

And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

-“There are times in a girl’s life when things like that are important.”

“Things like throwing a strawberry shortbread out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologizw to me.”Now I see, Midori. What a fool I’ve been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortbread.  I have all the inteligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy something else. What would you like?

Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

-“that one of our problems is our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities.”

-“What happens when people open their hearts?”

Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from her lips. She was enjoying this. “They get better,” she said. Ash dropped to the table, but she seemed not to notice.”

-“Don’t get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can’t don anything, don’t get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it’s come undone. You have to realize it’s going to be a long process and that you’ll work on things slowly, one at a time.”

-“If you want to sleep with me, I don’t mind. I’ve never slept with anybody, and I’m very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don’t mind at all. But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you take on all my troubles, and they’re a lot worse than you can imagine.”

-“The problem was, that kind of thing couldn’t go on forever,” said Naoko.”Such perfect little circles are impossible to maintain.”

-“What makes us most normal,” said Reiko,”is knowing that we’re not normal.”

-“Sometimes when the world gets to hard to live in, I come here for a vodka and tonic.”

-“Anyway, I was thinking, that time. I was thinking how great it would be if that had been the first time in my life a boy had kissed me. If I could switch around the order of my life, I would absolutely, absolutely make that my first kiss. And then I would live the rest of my life thinking stuff like: Hey, I wonder whatever happened to that boy named Watanabe I gave my first kiss to on the laundry deck, now that he’s 58? Wouldn’t that be great?”

-“People are strange when you’re a stranger.”

-“And I’m just spacing out feeling nice until, all of a sudden I realized what’s happening and I yell at you “Stop it Watanabe!” And then I say “I really like you Watanabe, but I’m seeing someone else. I can’t do this, I’m really proper about these things, believe it or not, so please stop.’ But you don’t stop.”

-“I want you and me to be captured by pirates. Then they strip us and press us together face to face all naked and wind these ropes around us.”

-“So that when it hits me. These guys are fakes. All they’ve got on their minds is  impressing the new girls with the big words they’re so proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts. And when they graduate, they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who’ve never read Marx and have kids they give fancy new names to that are enough to make me you puke.”

-“That does it, then. I’m not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I’m going to believe in.”

-“Midori smiled and touched my wrist. “A little before that, I decided I was going to believe in you. A hundred percent. That’s how I managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind. I know I’ll be alright, I’ll be safe with you there. And I did sleep like a log, didn’t I?”

-“From the bottom of my heart. I don’t ever want to let you go again. But there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make a move.”

-“Let me just tell you this Watanabe,” said Midori, pressing her cheeks against my neck.”I’m a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing through my veins. You’re holding me in your arms and I’m telling you that I love you. I’m ready to do anything you tell me to do. I maybe a little bit mad, but I’m a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I’m kinda cute, I have nice boobs, I’m a good cook, and my father left me a trust fund. I mean, I’m a real bargain don’t you think? If you don’t take me, I’ll end going somewhere else.”

-“I don’t care what you do to me, but I don’t want you to hurt me. I’ve had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.”

-“I like everything you wear, and I like what you do and say and how you walk and how you get drunk. Everything.”

-“All of us (by which I mean all of us both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don’t live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?”

-“No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.

-“I have to talk to you,” I said. “I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”