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After Dark
Haruki Murakami
Top 10 Best Quotes
“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.”
“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”
“If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”
“Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.”
“But why should you be interested in me?" Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.”
“It's my motto for life. 'Walk slowly; drink lots of water.”
“I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.”
“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”
“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”
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Book Keywords:
society, letter-writing, life, philosophy, weakness, memory, introspection