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...

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body...

The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. … It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell.

Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.

There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream

In response to my father-in-law’s view, I offered no opinion. He was not looking for my opinion. He had merely been spouting his belief, a conviction that would remain unchanged for all eternity.

His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo’s brain or that, like a...

No me queda más remedio que ser paciente, deshacer los nudos y volver a conectar cada hilo. Recomponer la situación. ,Por dónde empiezo? No encuentro el punto de partida. Estoy anclado al pie de un...

I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.

People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It’s just like a rock. What’s above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling,...

In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God’s kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance.

You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind...

They say it’s a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers – and I’m talking the most talented – are able to pull...

Listen to this, Nimit. Follow Coleman Hawkins’ improvised lines very carefully. He is using them to tell us something. Pay very close attention. He is telling us the story of the free spirit that is...

…the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They’re actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that’s not how they really feel. They just grumble out...

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...

I’m only sixteen and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch...

It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.

Estaba en la plenitud de la vida y todo giraba en torno a la muerte.

I don’t think it’s a question of liking or disliking it,” Tengo said…”It was the one thing he was best at.” “Hmm. I see,” Kumi said. She pondered this. “But that might very well be...

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.