The music world is where child prodigies go to die.

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed...

Unsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn’t eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could...

Onde há luz tem de haver sombra, e onde há sombra é forçoso que haja luz. Não existe sombra sem luz, nem luz sem sombra.

Hatred is like a tow-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself.

I wasn’t able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we’d done the...

Ura este ca o umbră lungă, neagră. În majoritatea cazurilor, nici persoana pe care o învăluie nu ştie de unde vine. Este ca o sabie cu două tăişuri. Îl tai pe adversar, dar te tai...

Tengo had a gift for such work. He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling...

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, ‘Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can’t forget me, there’s...

Ce sper eu e sa fac de ras lumea literara. Sa rad pe cat pot de netrebnicii astia lingusitori, adunati ca intr-un musuroi, care se pupa-n fund unul pe altul si isi ling ranile in...

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

You can have tons of talent, but it won’t necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you’ll never go hungry.

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how...

Life doesn’t require ideals. It requires standards of action.

Es decir…, lo que yo creo es que el hombre piensa en el significado de la vida porque sabe con certeza que va morir algún día. (…) Nadie sabe lo que va a ocurrir. Por...

It just happens to be the way that I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

And I really wanted to see you, too,” she said. “When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in...

If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, go for the one without form. That’s my rule.

Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn’t lead to anything

Hay una realidad que demuestra la verdad de un hecho. Porque nuestra memoria y nuestros sentidos son demasiado inseguros, demasiado parciales. Incluso podemos afirmar que muchas veces es imposible discernir hasta qué punto un hecho...

Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair.

The real world—where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere.

I don’t think I’d want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway.

Ci eravamo incontrati perché doveva succedere, e anche se non fosse stato quel giorno, prima o poi ci saremmo sicuramente incontrati da qualche altra parte.

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.

You sit at the edge of the world,I am in a crater that’s no more.Words without lettersStanding in the shadow of the door.The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,Little fish rain from the sky.Outside...

I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the...

…no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there’s no connection. And even supposing the will is there, there are times like now when we don’t...

Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You’re a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can...

Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.

Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas – none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I...

There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.

Quizá tampoco pueda decirse que soy un tipo corriente, pero raro no soy. Soy una persona extremadamente cabal, a mi manera. Muy directa. Directa como una flecha. Soy yo mismo de un modo sumamente natural...

Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I’m alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

Quizás aun no te comprenda. Pero, con un poco de tiempo, llegaré a entenderte. Y no habrá nadie en el mundo que te comprenda mejor que yo.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

It’s unfair.”As a rule, life is unfair,” I said.Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things.”To Dick?”Yeah.”I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. “That’s...

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I...

In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different....

Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed...

Tiesą, kaip tu ir sakei, dažniausiai lydi stiprus skausmas. O beveik niekas netrokšta skausmingos tiesos. Žmonėms reikia gražios ir jaukios pasakos, kuri leistų jiems bent truputį giliau pajusti savo gyvenimo prasmę. Būtent todėl atsiranda religijos.

The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.

At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes the past.

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere. -Komura

suffering is a misunderstood pain

He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn’t able to fill the void inside her....

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

Kitapus pievelės juodavo vėją užstojanti pušų giraitė, iš už kurios atsklisdavo bangų mūša. Nuožmių Ramiojo vandenyno bangų. Jos ošė sodriais ir niūriais balsais it daugybė susispietusių sielų, šnabždančių kiekviena savo istorijas. Ir atrodė, kad prisidėti...