โ
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Find me now. Before someone else does.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.
โ
โ
John Green (Paper Towns)
โ
You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.
โ
โ
John Green (Paper Towns)
โ
What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I am nothing. Iโm like someone whoโs been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
We bring the fucking rain Q, not the scattered showers.
โ
โ
John Green
โ
A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
โ
โ
Stephen W. Hawking
โ
Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: You'er presented with a smooth-faced, eight-foot-high wooden wall. Your objective? Get over it. To, like, save comrades or something. How to accomplish this?
A: Take a running start, brace one foot against the wall, throw one hand to the top, try to hang on long enough for a comrade to either grab your hand at the top or for another comrade to push your butt up from below. It takes team work!
BKA (bird kid answer): Or you could just, like, fly over it.
โ
โ
James Patterson (Max (Maximum Ride, #5))
โ
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone?
A: You can't hear an enzyme.
โ
โ
Dorothy Parker
โ
Please remember: things are not what they seem.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
A: The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.
Q: It always happens?
A: If we're lucky. And if we let ourselves be blind.
Q: Instead of watching out?
A: Instead of always watching out.
โ
โ
Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses)
โ
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.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
I was sentimental about many things: a womanโs shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, 'Iโm going to pee.' hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because sheโs now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together
โ
โ
Charles Bukowski (Women)
โ
If you never noticed, it never happened.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angryโat someone else or at herselfโwhich meant that it was rare for her to shed tears.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.'
Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q- What makes you depressed?
Seeing stupid people happy.
โ
โ
Slavoj ลฝiลพek
โ
Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
L.G.B.T.Q.I.P.O.Z.A.A.C.Vโฆโฆโฆโฆ.โย
โ
โ
Adam Scott Huerta (Motive Black (Motive Black Series, #1))
โ
Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
The thing Iโm most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what Iโm going to do. Of not knowing what Iโm doing right now
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Standing there, staring at the long shelves crammed with books, I felt myself relax and was suddenly at peace.
โ
โ
Helene Hanff (Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books)
โ
Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
You said you're going far away," Tamaru said. "How far away are we talking about?"
"It's a distance that can't be measured."
"Like the distance that separates one person's heart from another's.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Love doesn't happen in an instant. It creeps up on you and then it turns your life upside down. It colors your waking moments, and fills your dreams. You begin to walk on air and see life in brilliant new shades. But it also brings with it a sweet agony, a delicious torture.
โ
โ
Vikas Swarup (Q & A)
โ
Q: Why do you like chocolate so much?
A: The answer, clearly, is because I've tasted chocolate.
โ
โ
Pseudonymous Bosch
โ
I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?
A: Because you know I will never answer.
โ
โ
Vera Nazarian
โ
Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality!
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
My mind wanders to the other side of the courtyard, where St. Clair waits with Josh in Q-through-Z. I wonder if I have any classes with him. I mean, them. Classes with them.
โ
โ
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
โ
Asking me to just be myself is like asking a mirror to stop changing every time someone different looks at it.โ
Q
โ
โ
Frank Lambert (Cult of the Clan)
โ
According to Chekhov," Tamaru said, rising from his chair, "once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning, don't bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Strategy is really the essence of the boards value proposition to the company. The ability to strategize well is the essence of what makes a board relevant.
โ
โ
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
โ
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami
โ
Wherever there's hope there's a trial.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Iโm offering you my pain. My blood. My pleasure. Iโm offering you the right to whip and fuck. To debase and harm. Iโm offering to fight your needs with my own. Iโm willing to join you in the darkness and find pleasure in excruciating pain. Iโm willing to be your monster, Q.
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Tears of Tess (Monsters in the Dark, #1))
โ
I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.
โ
โ
Jim Butcher (Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1))
โ
A board-established and led vision is a critical element of effective corporate governance. It provides direction, inspires stakeholders, and guides the company towards a successful future.
โ
โ
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
โ
Youโre my obsession, Iโm your possession You own the deepest part of me You crawled into the darkness, set my monster free So scream, bleed, call out to me But never say stop, never flee
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark, #2))
โ
Any woman whose I.Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.
โ
โ
Rita Mae Brown
โ
thereโs always light in the darkness.
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark, #2))
โ
I move, therefore I am.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: Why write about slavery? Havenโt we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one?
A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but thereโs a lot of competition.
โ
โ
Colson Whitehead
โ
Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: Whatโs hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.
โ
โ
Tom Waits
โ
The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. Aomame raised her glass to the moon and asked, โHave you gone to bed with someone in your arms lately?โ
The moon did not answer.
โDo you have any friends?โ she asked.
The moon did not answer.
โDonโt you get tired of always playing it cool?โ
The moon did not answer.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q, you're going to go to Duke. You're going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you're going to die, and in the last moments, when you're chocking on your own bile in the nursing home, you'll say to yourself:'Well, I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman my senior year of high school. At least I carpe'd that one diem.
โ
โ
John Green (Paper Towns)
โ
Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.
โ
โ
Idries Shah (Seeker After Truth: A Handbook)
โ
It's not me but the world that's deranged.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I'm self-sufficient. I spend a lot of time on my own and I shut off quite easily. When I communicate, I communicate 900 per cent, then I shut off, which scares people sometimes.
โ
โ
Bjรถrk
โ
It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
As a board, you want to be able to identify exactly what the company is succeeding at and exactly what it's failing at so that you can amplify the successes and correct the failures with surgical precision.
โ
โ
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
โ
I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it."
[Q&A with Larry McCaffery, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993, Vol. 13.2]
โ
โ
David Foster Wallace
โ
Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #3))
โ
Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a come losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. Itโs all very painful โ as painful as actually being cut with a knife.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, โI see youโre an astrophysicist. Whatโs that?โ I answer, โAstrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universeโthe Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.โ Then he asks, โWhat do you teach at Princeton?โ and I say, โI teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.โ Five minutes later, Iโm on the street.
A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions weโd like to ask the court, and I say, โYes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The โthousandโ cancels with the โmilli-โ and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.โ Again Iโm out on the street.
โ
โ
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier)
โ
I may be a monster but I was her monster.!
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Tears of Tess (Monsters in the Dark, #1))
โ
People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me, right in front of my eye. That night i lost you, I lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person
โ
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, Iโm glad thatโs not me. Itโs basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Shakespeare said it best,' Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen head. 'Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other
โ
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Thereโs nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you donโt fit the stereotype yet.
โ
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.
โ
โ
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
โ
Q: When is the perfect time? A: Who can say, but probably somewhere between haste and delay - and it's usually most wise to start today.
โ
โ
Rasheed Ogunlaru
โ
I have always believed that one should not be scared of losing,I think that really is the key.
โ
โ
Imran Khan
โ
People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often.
โ
โ
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1))
โ
She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
If we can't alter the tide of events, at least we can be nearby with towels to mop up.
โ
โ
Peter David (Q-in-Law (Star Trek: The Next Generation #18))
โ
In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness."
"You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.
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โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Quando vocรช acha q sabe todas as perguntas vem ร vida e muda todas as respostas
โ
โ
Bob Marley
โ
You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Ackx must have owed him big time,โ Q said in his drawly Clint Eastwood voice. โA favour like that doesnโt come cheap.โ
Bonnyman spat into the fire. โA favour like that is only made between psychosis and a lust for power.
โ
โ
Frank Lambert (Xyz)
โ
This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.
โ
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
I hope you haven't given up on the S.Q.'s of the world, Reynie. As you see, there are a great many sheep in wolves' clothing. If not for S.Q.'s good nature, we'd never have escaped.
โ
โ
Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #2))
โ
Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.... We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-- from a time before good and evil even existed, when people's minds were still benighted.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: How would you like your eggs in the morning?
A: Unfertilized
โ
โ
Jodi Picoult
โ
Q was no longer the devil.
He was my master and I belonged to him.
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Tears of Tess (Monsters in the Dark, #1))
โ
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Meddy, how can you say that? Your aunties coming over, so late at night, coming to help us get rid of body, and we donโt even offer them any food? How can? Oh, we have dragon fruit, good, good.
โ
โ
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Dial A For Aunties)
โ
Q: Will I encounter turbulence?
A: Yes. Into all lives a little turbulence must fall.
โ
โ
Nicola Yoon (Everything, Everything)
โ
Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #3))
โ
Q: I want to be an author when I grow up. Am I insane?"
Neil Gaiman: "Yes. Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author."
[Jumbo.com, 21 August 2012]
โ
โ
Neil Gaiman
โ
Q. Star Wars or Star Trek? A. Doctor Who.
โ
โ
Andy Weir (The Martian)
โ
There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Two things I wanted most in the world: for Q to die a miserable death, and for him to fuck me.
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Tears of Tess (Monsters in the Dark, #1))
โ
I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
A bird with beautiful feathers is the target of many hunters.
โ
โ
Matshona Dhliwayo
โ
I had no fucking life before you. You are my life. Without you, I might as well take a shotgun to my head and join you in the dirt because, Tess, if you leave meโif youโre so fucking weak not to fight, then that is what will happen to me. Youโll crucify me.
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โ
Pepper Winters (Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark, #2))
โ
But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Sheโs flying free,โ Q whispered, freezing me. He raised his head to look at a sparrow that landed on the mesh by his hand. โSheโs leaving soon and I donโt think Iโll survive it.
โ
โ
Pepper Winters (Quintessentially Q (Monsters in the Dark, #2))
โ
It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
ุงูุนูุฏุฉ ุฅูู ููุทุฉ ุงูุจุฏุก ูู ุญูุงุชู : ูุนู ุฐูู ูู ุงูุดูุก ุงููุญูุฏ ุงูุฐู ุฃุชูู ุฅููู ุฃูุซุฑ ู
ู ุฃู ุดู ุขุฎุฑ
โ
โ
ูุงุฑููู ู
ูุฑุงูุงู
ู (1Q84 (1Q84, #2))
โ
Q: If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be?
A: You already are an animal.
โ
โ
Douglas Coupland (Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)
โ
Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
'Is that really the best you can say? An average-looking boy? An awful lot of boys are average-looking, S.Q.!' And poor S.Q., he just kept arguing that 'this boy was especially average-looking.' " ~ Kate Wetherall, The Mysterious Benedict Society
โ
โ
Trenton Lee Stewart
โ
And for the first time in my life, I saw something new reflected in the eyes that saw me. Respect. It taught me a very valuable lesson. That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others
โ
โ
Vikas Swarup (Q & A: Slumdog Millionaire)
โ
No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs.
B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clara who wasted away.
D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach.
F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George smothered under a rug.
H is for Hector done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.
J is for James who took lye by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.
L is for Leo who choked on some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea.
N is for Neville who died of ennui.
O is for Olive run through with an awl.
P is for Prue trampled flat in a brawl.
Q is for Quentin who sank on a mire.
R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who perished of fits.
T is for Titus who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain.
V is for Victor squashed under a train.
W is for Winnie embedded in ice.
X is for Xerxes devoured by mice.
Y is for Yorick whose head was bashed in.
Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.
โ
โ
Edward Gorey
โ
The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position. Learn all you can. Don't see how little you can do, but how much you can do.
โ
โ
William Walker Atkinson (The Power of Concentration)
โ
She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
belittle, v.
No, I don't listen to the weather in the morning. No, I don't keep track of what I spend. No, it hadn't occurred to me that the Q train would have been much faster. But every time you give me that look, it doesn't make me want to live up to your standards.
โ
โ
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
โ
Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com.
โ
โ
Douglas Coupland (Generation A)
โ
Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed self-sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
What's a flange?" asked Marcia.
A what?"
A flange. It says here attatch piece Y to the long, upright D, taking care to align holes P and Q with the corrosponding holes N and O in the left-hand flange. I can't see a wrethed flange anywhere.
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โ
Angie Sage (Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2))
โ
People just don't seem to get me. Don't understand that I need my space. Always telling me what to do. They think rules and routines and clean hands and your p's and q's will make everything all right. They haven't got a clue.
โ
โ
Rachel Ward (Numbers (Numbers, #1))
โ
Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world -- close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Iโm basically driven by a mixture of caffeine and familial guilt.
โ
โ
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Dial A for Aunties (Aunties, #1))
โ
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then thereโs salvation in life. Even if you canโt get together with that person.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami
โ
At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.
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โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about 'the Shadow' in one of his books: 'It is as evil as we are positive... the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive... The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George
W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse.
โ
โ
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms)
โ
Aunt Prue was holding one of the squirrels in her hand, while it sucked ferociously on the end of the dropper. 'And once a day, we have ta clean their little private parts with a Q-tip, so they'll learn ta clean themselves.' That was a visual I didn't need. 'How could you possibly know that?' 'We looked it up on the E-nternet.' Aunt Mercy smiled proudly. I couldn't imagine how my aunts knew anything about the Internet. The Sisters didn't even own a toaster oven. 'How did you get on the Internet?' 'Thelma took us ta the library and Miss Marian helped us. They have computers over there. Did you know that?
โ
โ
Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1))
โ
How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."
"Have you read it?"
"No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.
โ
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes.
โ
โ
Doris Lessing
โ
Wherever there's hope there's a trial. You're exactly right. Absolutely. Hope, however, is limited, and generally abstract, while there are countless trials, and they tend to be concrete. That is also something I had to learn on my own.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #3))
โ
The young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Iโve had that kind of experience myself: Iโm looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, โI absolutely have to go to this place, no matter whatโ. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. Itโs like measles - you canโt show other people exactly where the passion comes from. Itโs curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.
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โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
The only reason I donโt know more about love is because there just isnโt more to know. In fact, Iโve reduced love to a mathematical formula: Hdgk(X)=H2k(X,Q)โฉHk,k(X). Actually, thatโs not right. Thatโs the statement piece of the Hodge conjecture, but Iโm sure you already knew that.โจ
โ
โ
Jarod Kintz (The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.)
โ
I was confident that I was a special person. But time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received. I have only just learned that truth.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Donโt you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see thereโs a huge possibility youโll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isnโt that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Donโt you find that scary?
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Dr Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a good motor-vation. I never ever knew I had that. I felt proud when he said that not every body with an eye-q of 68 had that thing. I don't know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too. Algernons motor-vation is the cheese they put in his box. But it cant be that because I didnt eat any cheese last week.
โ
โ
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
โ
I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat.
And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. I woke up that morning, hot and bored, worried about the hours ahead. How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. I remember feeling that word, heavy and slightly sticky across my pubic bone. My mother's steak knife. Cutting like a child along red imaginary lines. Cleaning myself. Digging in deeper. Cleaning myself. Pouring bleach over the knife and sneaking through the kitchen to return it. Wicked. Relief. The rest of the day, I spent ministering to my wound. Dig into the curves of W with an alcohol-soaked Q-tip. Pet my cheek until the sting went away. Lotion. Bandage. Repeat.
โ
โ
Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)
โ
At my core, there is nothing. Neither is it parched wastelands. At my core, there is love. I'll go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo forever --- his strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"
"It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally."
...
" ... I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I'm sure it means they've died, but I can never find their bodies. They don't leave any trace behind. It's like they've been absorbed by the air. They're dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
โ
Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. Thatโs all it takes. You donโt have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
About novel Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott.
Q: What does the title "Imperfect Birds" mean?
It's a line from a poem by Rumi. The line is "Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds", and it's really about how these kind of scraggly, raggedy nests that are our lives are the sanctuary for other people to step into, and that if you want to see the divine, you really step into the absolute ordinary. When you're at your absolutely most lost and dejected ... where do you go? You go to the nests left by other imperfect birds, you find other people who've gone through it. You find the few people you can talk to about it.
from Writer's Digest May/June 2010
โ
โ
Anne Lamott
โ
How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #2))
โ
The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness.
โ
โ
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
โ
Q: Why do you think that people are so protective of their egos? Why is it so hard to let go of oneโs ego? A: People are afraid of the emptiness of space, or the absence of company, the absence of a shadow. It could be a terrifying experience to have no one to relate to, nothing to relate with. The idea of it can be extremely frightening, though not the real experience. It is generally a fear of space, a fear that we will not be able to anchor ourselves to any solid ground, that we will lose our identity as a fixed and solid and definite thing. This could be very threatening.
โ
โ
Chรถgyam Trungpa (Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)
โ
when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.
โ
โ
Ani DiFranco
โ
Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
โ
โ
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
โ
Q: Do you feel concerned that after all this work, people won't treat [Starship Titanic] with the gravity of, say, a movie or a book? That they won't treat it as an art form?
D.A.: I hope that's the case, yes. I get very worried about this idea of art. Having been an English literary graduate, I've been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity. ... [I]f somebody wants to come along and say, "Oh, it's art," that's as may be. I don't really mind that much. But I think that's for other people to decide after the fact. It isn't what you should be aiming to do. There's nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, "Well, okay, I'm going to do something of high artistic worth." ... I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don't think they're doing art, but merely practicing a craft, and working as good craftsmen. ... I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.
โ
โ
Douglas Adams
โ
Well,โ you may ask, โhow may I know when I am in love?โ
. . . George Q. Morris [who later became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, gave this reply]: โMy mother once said that if you meet a girl in whose presence you feel a desire to achieve, who inspires you to do your best, and to make the most of yourself, such a young woman is worthy of your love and is awakening love in your heart.
โ
โ
David O. McKay
โ
Q.Why don't you write about nice people? Haven't you ever known any nice people in your life?
A.My theory about nice people is so simple that I am embarrassed to say it.
Q.Please say it.
A.Well, I've never met one that I couldn't love if I completely knew him and understood him, and in my work I have at least tried to arrive at knowledge and understanding.
I don't believe in 'original sin'. I don't believe in 'guilt'. I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.
Why don't we meet these people and get to know them as I try to meet and know people in my plays?
โ
โ
Tennessee Williams
โ
Salaar Sikandar nay pichlay aath saalon mai Imama Hashim kay liye her jazba mehsoos kiya tha. Hiqaarat,tazheek,pachtaawa,nafrat,mohabbat sab kuch......Magar aaj wahan bethay pehli baar ussay Imama Hashim say hasad horaha tha.Thi kiya woh......?Aik aurat.....Zara si aurat....Asmaan ki hoor nahi thi....Salaar Sikandar jesay aadmi kay saamnay kiya auqaat thi uss ki. Kiya mera jesa I.Q Level tha uss
ka?Kiya meray jesi kamiyaabiyaan theen us ki?Kiya meray jesa kaam karsakti thi woh?Kiya meray jesa naam kama sakti thi?Kuch bhi nahi thi woh aur uss ko sab kuch plate mai rakh kar day diya aur main......Main jis ka I.Q Level 150+ hai mujhay saamnay ki cheezain dekhnay kay qaabil nahi rakha?Woh ab aankhon mai nami liye andheray mai wind screen say baahar dekhtay hue barbara raha tha."Mujhay bus iss qaabil kardiya kay main baahar nikloon aur duniya fatah kar loon.Woh duniya jis ki koi wuq'at hi nahi hai aur woh....woh...."Woh ruk gaya.Ussay Imama per ghussa araha tha.Aath saal pehlay ka waqt hota tu woh ussay "Bitch" kehta,tab Imama per ghussa anay per woh ussay yehi kaha karta tha magar aath saal kay baad aaj woh zabaan per uss kay liye gaali nahi la sakta tha.Woh Imama Hashim kay liye koi bura lafz nikalnay ki jurrat nahi kar sakta tha.Siraat-e-Mustaqeem per khud say bohat aagay khari uss aurat kay liye kaun zabaan say bura lag nikaal sakta tha?Apnay glasses utaar kar uss nay apni aankhain masleen.Uss kay andaaz mai shikast khoordagi thi."Pir-e-Kamil(S.A.W.W)......Siraat-e-Mustaqeem....Aath saal lagay thay,magar talash khatam hogayi thi.Jawab mil chuka tha.
โ
โ
Umera Ahmed
โ
Maybe you do something slightly bad, so what? Now you learn from it. You have a better judgment now. Better morals, because you learn from your personal mistake. This what life is about, Riki. No one is perfect, making right decisions all the time. Only those who are so privileged can make right decision all the time. The rest of us, we have to struggle, keep afloat. Sometimes we do things we are not proud of. But now you know where your lines are. You are good boy, Riki. You have good heart. That is all that matters.
โ
โ
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1))
โ
Q. What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life - the need for taking time to be alone with God?
Lewis: "We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are his commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door.
โ
โ
C.S. Lewis
โ
Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins.
โ
โ
Camille Paglia (Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays)
โ
He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didnโt stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.
During the following weeks Ford Perfect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox.
โ
โ
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
โ
Q.Do you have any positive message, in your opinion?
A.Indeed I do think that I do.
Q.Such as what?
A.The crying, almost screaming, need of a great worldwide human effort to know ourselves and each other a great deal better, well enough to concede that no man has a monopoly on right or virtue any more than any man has a corner on duplicity and evil and so forth. If people, and races and nations, would start with that self-manifest truth, then I think that the world could sidestep the sort of corruption which I have involuntarily chosen as the basic, allegorical theme of my plays as a whole.
โ
โ
Tennessee Williams
โ
Tony:...but you need something to do about Noah.
Paul: I know, I know. The only problem being that (a) he thinks I'm getting back with my ex-boyfriend, (b) he thinks I'll only hurt him, because (c) I've already hurt him and (d) someone else has already hurt him, which means that I'm hurting him even more. So (e) he doesn't trust me, and in all fairness, (g) every time I see him, I (h) want everything to be right again and I (i) want to kiss him madly. This means that (j) my feelings aren't going away anytime soon, but (k) his feelings don't look likely to budge, either. So either (l) I'm out of luck, (m) I'm out of hope, or (n) there's a way to make it up to him that I'm not thinking of. I could (o) beg, (p) plead, (q) grovel, or (r) give up. But, in order to do that, I would have to sacrifice my (s) pride, (t) reputation, and (u) self-respect, even though (v) I have very little of them left and (w) it probably wouldn't work anyway. As a result, I am (x) lost, (y) clue-free, and (z) wondering if you have any idea whatsoever what I should do.
โ
โ
David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy)
โ
Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
โ
โ
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
โ
That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names โ anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression โ but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It.
It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency โ sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying โ are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.
It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one.
The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who's being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who's not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it's a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.
โ
โ
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
โ
In a way, what Tarantino has done with the French New Wave and with David Lynch is what Pat Boone did with rhythm and blues: He's found (ingeniously) a way to take what is ragged and distinctive and menacing about their work and homogenize it, churn it until it's smooth and cool and hygienic enough for mass consumption. Reservoir Dogs, for example, with its comically banal lunch chatter, creepily otiose code names, and intrusive soundtrack of campy pop from decades past, is a Lynch movie made commercial, i.e., fast, linear, and with what was idiosyncratically surreal now made fashionably (i.e., "hiply") surreal [...] D. Lynch is an exponentially better filmmaker than Q. Tarantino. For, unlike Tarantino, D. Lynch knows that an act of violence in an American film has, through repetition and desensitization, lost the ability to refer to anything but itself. A better way to put what I just tried to say: Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.
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โ
David Foster Wallace
โ
The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.
โ
โ
Jim Butcher (Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1))
โ
INTUITION (L. intueri, โto look at or intoโ). I regard intuition as a basic psychological function (q.v.). It is the function that mediates perceptions in an unconscious way. Everything, whether outer or inner objects or their relationships, can be the focus of this perception. The peculiarity of intuition is that it is neither sense perception, nor feeling, nor intellectual inference, although it may also appear in these forms. In intuition a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence. Intuition is a kind of instinctive apprehension, no matter of what contents. Like sensation (q.v.), it is an irrational (q.v.) function of perception. As with sensation, its contents have the character of being โgiven,โ in contrast to the โderivedโ or โproducedโ character of thinking and feeling (qq.v.) contents. Intuitive knowledge possesses an intrinsic certainty and conviction, which enabled Spinoza (and Bergson) to uphold the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge. Intuition shares this quality with sensation (q.v.), whose certainty rests on its physical foundation. The certainty of intuition rests equally on a definite state of psychic โalertnessโ of whose origin the subject is unconscious.
โ
โ
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
โ
Gunaah ka bojh kiya hota hai aur aadmi apnay gunaah kay bojh ko kiss tarah qayaamat kay din apni pusht say utaar phainkna chahay ga kiss tarah uss say door bhaagna chahay ga kiss tarah doosray kay kandhay per daal dena chahay ga,yeh uss ki samajh mai Haram Shareef mai pohanch kar aya tha.Wahan kharay ho kar woh apnay paas mojood aur anay wali saari zindagi ki daulat kay aiwaz bhi kisi ko woh guna
ah baichna chahta tu koi yeh tijarat na karta.Kaash aadmi kisi maal kay aiwaz apnay gunaah baich sakta.Kisi ujrat kay taur per doosron ki naikiyaan mangnay ka haq rakhta.Laakhon loagon kay iss hujoom mai 2 sufaid chaadarain orhay,kaun janta tha kay Salaar Sikandar kaun tha?Uss ka I.Q Level kiya tha.Kissay parwah thi?Uss kay paas kaun kaunsi aur kahan ki Degree thi.Kissay hosh tha?Uss nay zindagi kay Maidaan mai kitnay taleemi record toray aur banaye thay.Kissay khabar thi woh apnay zehan kay kaun say maidaan taskheer karnay wala tha.Kaun rashk karnay wala tha?Woh wahan uss hujoom mai thokar kha kar girta,Bhagdar mai ronda jata.Uss kay ooper say guzarnay wali khalqat mai say koi bhi yeh nahin sochta kay unhone kaisay dimaagh ko kho diya hai.Kiss I.Q Level kay nayaab aadmi ko kis tarah khatam kar diya tha.Ussay duniya mai apni auqaat,apni ahmiyat ka pata chal gaya tha.Agar kuch mughaalita reh bhi gaya tha tu ab khatam hogaya tha.Agar kuch shubah baaqi tha,tu ab door hogaya tha.Fakhar,takabbur,rashk,ana,khudpasandi,khud sataayishi kay her bachay hue tukray ko nichor kar uss nay andar say phaink diya tha.Woh in hi alaaishon ko door karwanay kay liye wahan aya tha.
โ
โ
Umera Ahmed
โ
Sometimes a strikeout means that the sluggerโs girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstopโs baby daughter has a pain in her head that wonโt go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers donโt ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wifeโs breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.
Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that itโs so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.โs thesis that pro ball-playersโlittle as some of them may want to hear itโare basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting.
โ
โ
David James Duncan
โ
I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to do my hair a certain way with certain styling products and particular combs and methods so that I can fit in with the In-Crowd. I want to spend hours upon hours at the gym, stuffing my body with what scientists are calling 'superfoods', so that I can be loved and envied by everyone around me. I want to become an icon on someone's mantle. I want to work meaningless jobs so that I can fill my wallet and parentally-advised bank accounts with monetary potential. I want to believe what's on the news so that I can feel normal along with the rest of forever. I want to listen to the Top Ten on Q102, and roll my windows down so others can hear it and see that I am listening to it, and enjoying it. I want to go to church every Sunday, and pray every other day. I want to believe that what I do is for the promise of a peaceful afterlife. I want rewards for my 'good' deeds. I want acknowledgment and praise. And I want people to know that I put out that fire. I want people to know that I support the war effort. I want people to know that I volunteer to save lives. I want to be seen and heard and pointed at with love. I want to read my name in the history books during a future full of clones exactly like me.
The mirror, I've noticed, is almost always positioned above the sink. Though the sink offers more depth than a mirror, and mirror is only able to reflect, the sink is held in lower regard. Lower still is the toilet, and thought it offers even more depth than the sink, we piss and shit in it. I want these kind of architectural details to be paralleled in my every day life. I want to care more about my reflection, and less about my cleanliness. I want to be seen as someone who lives externally, and never internally, unless I am able to lock the door behind me.
I want these things, because if I didn't, I would be dead in the mirrors of those around me. I would be nothing. I would be an example. Sunken, and easily washed away.
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โ
Dave Matthes