The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Vintage International)

“Properly speaking, of course, we cannot call it chaos. Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for using it, but people won’t necessarily follow them.”

Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.

But as is so often the case with men who have made it like this, he was arrogant and self-righteous.

used to wonder if he could hear what the spirits said to him if he was so hard of hearing.

I mean, the world’s full of things we can’t explain, and somebody’s got to fill that vacuum. Better to have somebody who isn’t boring than somebody who is. Right? Like Mr. Honda, for example.”

But this was the home I had chosen.

“Yes, I suppose what I am saying does sound very general,” said Malta Kano. “But after all, Mr. Okada, when one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things certainly do command attention, but they are often little more than trivia. Side trips. The more one tries to see into the dis

Weird. Food one minute, garbage the next.

I felt empty: no furniture, no curtains, no rugs. Just an empty container.