Haruki Murakami: Likeness (page 5)

“He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn’t able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.”

“A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait.”

“You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?”

“I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.”

“Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.”

“I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off.”

“To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.”

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone”

“Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.”

“Strong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.”

“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.” Sara looked directly into his eyes. “If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can’t erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don’t fit the stereotype yet.”

“Colors shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.”

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”

“Imagineminus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you.”

“It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.”

“Life is like a box of cookies.”

“I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind.”

“Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.”