Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?””I guess it depends on how you die.

I write weird stories. I don’t know why I like weirdness so much. Myself, I’m a very realistic person. I don’t trust anything New Age — or reincarnation, dreams, Tarot, horoscopes. I don’t trust anything...

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That’s what can move the world....

I sat on a somewhat higher sand dune and watched the eastern sky. Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then...

When pain comes to me, I leave my physical self. It’s just like quietly slipping into the next room when someone you don’t want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I...

Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality. You might think that –by following language and a logic that appears consistent– you’re able...

With each passing moment I’m becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.

I never trust people with no appetite. It’s like they’re always holding something back on you.

You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can’t erase the history that produced them

There’s a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers. … 1Q84 – that’s what I’ll call this...

I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don’t know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and...

Because you are neither an angel nor a god. I am quite aware that your actions have been prompted by your pure feelings, and I understand perfectly well that, for that very reason, you do...

Our faces were no more than ten inches apart, but she was light years away from me.

Si no quieres acabar en un manicomio, abre tu corazon y abandonate al curso natural de la vida

Anyway, I’m in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a...

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini’s ‘The Thieving Magpie,’ which has to be the perfect...

Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence.

Todo el mundo crece, lo quiera o no. Todos nos hacemos mayores, y así nos enfrentamos a nuestros problemas. Lidiamos con ellos hasta que morimos. Siempre ha sido así y siempre lo será. No eres...

What do you mean, ‘playing really creatively’? Can you give me an example?””Hmm, let’s see … you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of...

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

I’m often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I’m...

If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.

Los pensamientos que acuden a mi mente cuando corro se parecen a las nubes del cielo. Nubes de diversas formas y tamaños. Nubes que vienen y se van. Pero el cielo siempre es el cielo....

I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can’t work out what’s real and what isn’t… That kind of feeling. Do you have...

Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno...

It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable tofind a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to...

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own value to live by, and the same holds true with me.

You’re wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise...

Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound.

Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose,” began the man. “You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between...

I don’t deserve a girl like Hatsumi,” Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him.

Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you...

Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly...

Her words didn’t have the acrid smell of death.

Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people’s eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference.

For a while” is a phrase whose length can’t be measured.At least by the person who’s waiting.

It’s easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit.

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us–that’s snatched right out of our hands–even if we are left...

Somos seres imperfectos que vivimos en un mundo imperfecto

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If...

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just...

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness...

The darkness behind my closed eyelids was like the cloud-covered sky, but the gray was somewhat deeper. Every few minutes, someone would come and paint over the gray with a different-textured gray – one with...

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living breathing novel. A story is...

That sounds good. But I don’t like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free-to go to where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I...

La vida es esencialmente injusta. De eso no cabe la menor duda. Pero creo que incluso de las situaciones injustas es posible extraer lo que de “justicia” haya en ellas. Puede que ello cueste tiempo...

Once you’re lost, you panic. You’re in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, ‘cause when you get in the mood...

Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are...

But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.