Kafka on the Shore

“What Chekhov was getting at is this: necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn’t play a role shouldn’t exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That’s what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals or meaning don’t have anything to

Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.

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

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making ne

Just as blood travels down veins, what I’m seeing is my inner self, and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.

She knows all kinds of things you’re clueless about, she’s experienced a range of emotions you’ve never felt. The longer people live, the more they learn to distinguish what’s important from what’s not.

Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird … People are born in order to

The record is over, the needle lifts up and returns to its cradle.

I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I’ll never outrun that awful feeling.