The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds...

All you have to do is wait. Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair...

A deaf composer’s like a cook who’s lost his sense of taste. A frog that’s lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don’t you...

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I...

Passion can’t sustain itselfforever.

But still,” Ayumi said, “it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.””You may be right,” Aomame said, “But it’s too late to trade it in for another...

Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens...

The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The...

The silence is so deep it hurts our ears

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.

Ao longo da vida vamos descobrindo aos poucos quem somos na realidade e, à medida que o descobrimos, perdemos parte da nossa identidade.

Soy incapaz de sentir interés en novelas que no causen desconcierto a los lectores. Esto no quiere decir que intente desconcertarles o escribir algo difícil. Lo que quiero decir es que las novelas largas que...

You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your...

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that...

It’s like doughnut holes. Whether you take a doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one...

Oshima’s silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. “I know how you feel,” he...

Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none....

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep...

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain....

That’s the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything’s dark and you can’t see, and the people...

Writing things was important, wasn’t it? Nakata asked.’Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn’t control you–you should control them.

Vlinders zijn de meest vergankelijke, gracieuze schepsels ter wereld. Ze worden uit het niets geboren, verlangen stilletjes naar iets heel kleins en beperkts, om uiteindelijk weer als in het niets te verdwijnen.

When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.

I’m not afraid to die. What I’m afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.

Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn’t happen right away.

Something will work out tomorrow, I thought. And if not, then tomorrow I’ll do some thinking. Ob—la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.

It is cognition that is the fantasy…. Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of...

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one...

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s...

We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we...

The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let’s leave doubt for tomorrow,” Komatsu said. “That is the point.

Are there any capitalist cats?” Nakata asked

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved...

A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born but you can choose how you die.

I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn’t keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn’t work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis...

At some point paradise would be lost.

A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly...

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.

We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something – with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.

Listen up – there’s no war that will end all wars.

Dreams are the kind of things you can borrow and lend out.

Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we...

O coração humano é como um pássaro nocturno. Espera por qualquer coisa em silêncio e, quando chega a altura, levanta voo e vai direito a ela.

It was as if – this something I thought of only later, of course – she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person’s heart, a very sensual feeling.

Think it over carefully. This is very important,” I say, “because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the...

piensa que el hecho de que no existan luchas, odio ni deseos significa que tampoco existen las cosas opuestas. Es decir, la alegría, la paz de espíritu, el amor. Porque es de la desesperanza, del...

The third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly moving through time...