kafka on the shore, haruki murakami.
my favourite quotes.

♡

♡: "even chance meetings are the result of karma"...."that things in life are fated by our previous lives. that even in the smallest events there's no such thing called coincidence".

♡: i stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. in a hundred  years everybody here - me included - will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. a weird thought, but everything in front of me begins to seem unreal, as if a gust of wind could blow it all away.

♡: the term "spirit projection" sprang to mind. are you familiar with t? japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body, goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body. the sort of vengeful spirits that populate the tale of genji may be something similar. the notion of the soul not just leaving the body at death but - assuming the will is strong enough - also being able to separate from the body of the living is probably an idea that took root in japan in ancient times. of course, there's no scientific proof of this, and i hesitate even to propose the idea.

♡: but what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. the kind t.s. eliot calls 'hollow men'. people who fill up that lack imagination with heartless 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. 

♡: "listen, kafka. what you're experiencing now is the motif of many greek tragedies. man doesnt choose fate. fate chooses man. that's the basic world view of greek drama. and the sense of tragedy - according to aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. do you know what i'm getting at? people are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. sophocles' oedipus rex being a great example. oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness oe stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. so an inevitable irony results.

♡: from the chair i watch how she carries herself, every motion natural and elegant. i can't express it well, but there's definitely something special about it, as if her retreating figure is trying to tell me something she couldn't express while she is facing me.

♡: "i'm free", i think. i shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free i am, but can't really understand what it means. all i know is im completely alone. all alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solidary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. is this what it means to be free?

♡: rain falls, something scrambles across the cabin roof and sometimes i hear indescribable sounds i can't explain. i never knew the world was full of so many beautiful, natural sounds.

♡: instead of racing through, i reread parts i think are the most important till i understand them, to get something tangible in them.

♡: theres only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. it's as tolstoy said: happiness is an allegory, unhappiness is a story.

♡: oshima doesn't say a word. but his silence encourages me.

♡: the stone itself is meaningless. the situation calls for something, and at this point in time it just happens to be this stone. anton shekhov put it best when he said, "if a pistol appears in a story, eventually its got to be fired". do you know what he meant?

♡: you hold her in your arms, draw her close, kiss her. you can feel the strength deserting her body.

♡: i'm not the one that decides whether that flute turns out to be good or evil, and neither are you. it all depends on when and where i am. in that sense i'm a man entirely with prejudices, like history or the weather- unbiased.

♡: i want to call out to the soldiers in front of me, im not going back, i'm staying. but no voice comes out. words have no life in them.

♡:  "depending on the waves you might never make it back to the surface. so there you are, underwater, pounded by the waves, and there's nothing you can do. flailing around's not going to get you anywhere, you'll just use up your energy. you've never been so scared in your life. but unless you get over that fear you'll never be a real surfer. you have to face death, really get to know it, then overcome it. when you're down in that whirlpool you start thinking about all kinds if things. it's like you get to be friends with death, have a heart-to-heart talk with it".