As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.
It just happens to be the way that I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.
+ comprehend + writing + writer + reflect + reflective + made + personality + haruki murakami + norwegian wood
It’s precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive - or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.
+ haruki murakami + pain + suffering + depression + despair + overcome + fight + recovery + living + feeling + alive + experience + time + awakening + awareness + sense + action
The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now.
+ afraid + self + control + self-control + doing + knowing + haruki murakami + IQ84 + murakami + going to do + right now + time
Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside.
+ projections + haruki murakami + labyrinth + inside + outside + life + reality + consciousness + thinking + feeling + mind + wisdom + stuck + philosophy + trap
Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.
Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.
+ haruki murakami + narrow minded + devoid + imagination + close minded + theories + intolerant + empty + terminology + reality + ideals + inflexible + frighten + fear + loathe + people + society + narrow + thinking
No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to defining myself.
But that calm won’t last long, you know. It’s like beasts that never tire, tracking you everywhere you go. They come out at you deep in the forest. They’re tough, relentless, merciless, untiring, and they never give up.
+ Haruki Murakami + calm + beast + fight + tough + relentless + struggle + tiring + give up + depression
I spread my hands out in front of me and take a good hard look at them. What am I always so tense about? Why this desperate struggle just to survive?
+ survive + struggle + tense + anxiety + depression + pain + haruki murakami
That blank, silent interval leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into you heart and remains there for a lone, long time. Finally it’s a part of you.
+ haruki murakami + sadness + blank + heart + silent + fog + depression + empty
Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free…They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.
+ free + imprisoned + enslaved + people + bound + illusion + free will + think + haruki murakami
Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.
+ Haruki Murakami + narrow minded + imagination + intelligent + creative + reality + fear + loathe + ignorance
I’m finished as a human being, she said, all you’re looking at is the lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I’m just functioning by auto-memory.
+ Haruki Murakami + human + dead + functioning + memory + inside + died
