Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.

Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they’re able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense...

No two human beings are alike; it’s a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin’ from the aggregate memories of that individual’s past experiences. The layman’s word for this is the...

He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone.

It’s autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It’s exhausting to get into those crowds. And the...

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.

El odio es una sombra negra y alargada. En muchos casos, ni siquiera quien lo siente sabe de dónde le viene. Es un arma de doble filo. Al mismo tiempo que herimos al contrincante nos...

I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn’t find as many. Some of them really look...

It’s not so easy for people to end their own lives. It’s not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it’s all over, they’re dead. The reality is not...

I study the chessboard and concede defeat.”You can gain yourself in five moves” says the Colonel. “Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until...

From the girl who sat before me now…surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like...

Image is everything. You don’t spare any expense to create the right image. And word of mouth is critical. Once you get a good reputation, momentum will carry you.

Nobody chooses to evolve. It’s like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what’s happening until they hit, then it’s too late.

Su vida parecía haber perdido el rumbo. Aunque nunca se había fijado realmente un objetivo, hasta entonces la gente había creado ciertas expectativas a su alrededor. Respondiendo a esas expectativas, su vida había transcurrido con...

I’ve had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no....

here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never...

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it’s the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there’s fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for...

If she did experience sex–or something close to it–in high school, I’m sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

People change,’ Sara said.’True enough,’ Tsukuru said. ‘People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us knew anything substantial about...

There are all kinds of things we have to deal with in life,’ Eri finally said. ‘And one thing always seems to connect with another. You try to solve one problem, only to find that...

Reiko set the ball on the ground and patted my knee. “Look,” she said, “I’m not telling you to stop sleeping with girls. If you’re O.K. with that, then it’s OK. It’s your life after...

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed...

Sometimes we don’t need words. Rather, it’s words that need us.

Mr. Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can’t be too cautious. The same holds true for cats and human beings.

Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know – lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer...

A veces, el destino se parece a una pequeña tempestad de arena que cambia de dirección sin cesar. Tú cambias de rumbo intentando evitarla. Y entonces la tormenta también cambia de dirección, siguiéndote a ti....

Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y quiero que me comprendan. Hasta cierto punto, pienso que es inevitable que el resto de la...

Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it.

Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had...

Ships passing in broad daylight.

At the same time that ‘I’ am the content of a relation, ‘I’ am also that which does the relating.

Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

Every person has their own colour.

Maybe that’s why people don’t like you. You make it obvious you don’t care whether people like you or not. That makses some people angry.

I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a...

One guy yelled at me, ‘You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?’ Well, that did it. I wasn’t going to put up with that. Ok, I’m not so...

Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who...

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

I love pop culture — the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That’s why I said I don’t like elitism.

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I...

Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

There’s no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don’t you think?

Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong?...

Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.

But thing in the past are like plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?

If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.

No, I don’t think I’ve been defiled. But I haven’t been saved, either. There’s nobody who can save me right now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The world looks totally empty to me. Everything I see around...