Quotes from book
A Wild Sheep Chase

Name: A Wild Sheep Chase
Author: Haruki Murakami

Haruki MurakamiOriginal title 羊をめぐる冒険 (Japanese, 1982)

A Wild Sheep Chase is the third novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. First published in Japan in 1982, it was translated into English in 1989. It is an independent sequel to Pinball, 1973, and the third book in the so-called "Trilogy of the Rat". It won the 1982 Noma Literary Newcomer's Prize.

“I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“I don't know, there's something about you. Say there's an hourglass: the sand's about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 2: Sixteen Steps

“Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 26, The Sheep Professor

“Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 10, Counting Sheep

“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“The song is over. But the melody lingers on.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

“Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 13, The Rat's First Letter

“Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 15, The Song Is Over

“Mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

“A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

“You have an interesting history. Now people can generally be classified in to two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the letter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of dreamers.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 17, The Strange Man's Strange Tale

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

“Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)
Context: I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

“The light of morning decomposes everything.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 25, Transit Completed at Movie Theater, On to The Dolphin Hotel
Context: "Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment," she said, thrusting a skinny back of her hand before my eyes, "most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”