“No matter how much you hate or how much you suffer, you can't bring the dead back to life”
“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
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Haruki Murakami 655
Japanese author, novelist 1949Related quotes

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 12
Context: Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology... But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. And for me, what happened in the woods that day is one of these.

His opinion on the loyalty of Zionists to the United States
Willard Hotel speech (1961)