=?cp932?Q?Norwegian_Wood_=81\Haruki_Murakami?=

1) Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it
any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would
make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years
later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the
scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about
the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of
us together, and then about myself again. I was at that age, that time
of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like
a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications.
Scenery was the last thing on my mind. \ Norwegian Wood
2) Tell me how you could say such a thingc You're not telling me
anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you
will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed
my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the
only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd
never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be
blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching
over me if you can't see that?c I'm confused. Really confused. And
it's a lot deeper than you think. Deeper . . . darker . . . colder. \
Norwegian Wood
3) I don't know, sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my
heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really
love anybody. \ Norwegian Wood
4) That's what I mean by possibility. It's all around you. How can you
ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it;
can you keep your mouth shut and let it pass? \ NW
5) Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out if my way to
make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. \ NW
50) Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action. \ NW
6) For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or
silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all. \ NW
7) It's always a long, long process, and at the end you almost can't
tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that's left is pain and
suffering... 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 around you
think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn't stand
it. \ NW
8) It was the usual midday university scene, bust as I sat watching it
with renewed attention, I became aware of something. In his or her own
way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really
happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on
this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I
felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here
who was not truly part of the scene.
9) The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.
10) When it's raining like thisc it feels as if we're the only ones in
the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could
stay together.
11) Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that
as the premise for everything else, though. I'm going to give it 100
per cent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what
I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and if things go
bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an
unfair society I'd a society that makes it possible for you to exploit
your abilities to the limit.
12) If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until
your eyes get used to the dark.
13) Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them
take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going
to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that.
14) By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it
was only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from
Naoko's death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from
losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness,
can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the
end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in
facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.
15) Sometimes I feel like the caretaker of a museum \ a huge, empty
museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one
but myself.
16) We all have to die like that sometime. I will, and so will you.
17) Letters are just pieces of paper... Burn them, and what stays in
your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.
18) I have to talk to you... I have a million things to talk to you
about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this
world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to
begin everything from the beginning.

miki