Wind Pinball Quotes

Looking at the ocean makes me miss people, and hanging out with people makes me miss the ocean.

All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.

There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong.

How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?

Franz Kafka is Dead He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children's hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees , Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone. They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It's said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.

However miserable your situation, there is always something to learn.

Why do you read books?” he asked. “Why do you drink beer?” I replied without glancing in his direction,

Sometimes, I imagine how great it would be if we could live our lives without bothering other people.

People with dark hearts have dark dreams. Those whose hearts are even darker can’t dream at all.

Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all.

People are awkward creatures. A lot more awkward than you seem to realize.

We're all wrong, every one of us.

Am I happy? All I can say is I guess so. That's pretty much the way it is with dreams.

Civilization is communication,” the doctor said. “That which is not expressed doesn’t exist.

Writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

On any given day, something can come along and steal our hearts. It may be any old thing: a rosebud, a lost cap, a favorite sweater from childhood, an old Gene Pitney record. A miscellany of trivia with no home to call their own. Lingering for two or three days, that something soon disappears, returning to the darkness. There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them." -from "Pinball, 1973

There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of writing. Just as there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues." -from "Heart the Wind Sing

What we shared was no more than a fragment of a time long dead. Yet memories remained, warm memories that remained with me like lights from the past. And I would carry those lights in the brief interval before death grabbed me and tossed me back into the crucible of nothingness.

Time goes by so damn fast.

it’s even harder to talk about girls who have died young: by dying, they stay young forever.

All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all." -from "Pinball, 1973

In the end we all die anyway.

There are things in this world you can’t do a damn thing about.” “Like what?” “Like a rotten tooth, for example. One day it just starts aching. No one can ease the pain, no matter how hard they try to comfort you. It makes you furious with yourself. Next thing you know you’re furious with them because they aren’t pissed off with themselves. See how it escalates?

No sooner had one season slipped out the door than the next came in by another door. A person might scramble to the closing door and call out, Hey, wait a minute, there’s one last thing I forgot to tell you. But nobody would be there any more. The door shuts tight. Already another season is in the room, sitting in a chair, striking a match to light a cigarette. Anything you forgot to mention, the stranger says, you might as well go ahead and tell me, and if it works out, I’ll get the message through. Nah, it’s okay, you say, it was nothing really. And all around, the sound of the wind. Nothing, really. A season’s died, that’s all.

It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl's skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams. But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

All of us are laboring under the same conditions. It’s like we’re all flying in the same busted airplane. Sure, some of us are luckier than others. Some are tough and some are weak. Some are rich and some poor. But no one’s superman—in that way, we’re all weak. If we own things, we’re terrified we’ll lose them; if we’ve got nothing we worry it’ll be that way forever. We’re all the same. If you catch on to that early enough, you can try to make yourself stronger, even if only a little. It’s okay to fake it. Right? There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong.

Each of us had all the troubles we could carry. They rained down on us from the sky, and we raced around in a frenzy to pick them up and stuff them in our pockets. Why we did that stumps me, even now. Maybe we thought they were something else.

There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of writing. Just as there’s no such thing as perfect despair.” So

At the same time, though, I love writing. Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.

A perfect silence blanketed the floor like a heavy fog. The

All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.

Why? This world is rife with matters philosophy cannot explain.

There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them.

I guess because I feel like I can forgive dead people,

If one operates on the principle that everything can be a learning experience, then of course aging needn't be so painful." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

In the end, writing is not a full step toward self-healing, just a tiny, very tentative move in that direction.

It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine--without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.

Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues.

On any given day, something can come along and steal our hearts. It may be any old thing: a rosebud, a lost cap, a favorite sweater from childhood, an old Gene Pitney record. A miscellany of trivia with no home to call their own. Lingering for two or three days, that something soon disappears, returning to the darkness. There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them.

It was a senseless, evil thing to do. Still, evil like that is everywhere in this world, mountains of it. I can't understand it, you can't understand it. But it's there, no question. You could say we're surrounded by it.

Zoals de professor tegen zijn scriptiestudent zei: 'Je schrijft goed, je redeneert prachtig, je zegt alleen niets'.

We can learn from anything if we put in the effort. Right down to the most everyday, commonplace thing.

Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.

He who gives freely shall receive in kind.

How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?

Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end. Click…OFF.

I don’t know what that has to do with being cool. But if a fridge that has to be defrosted all year round can be called cool, then that’s what I was.

Why do you read books?” he asked. “Why do you drink beer?” I replied without glancing in his direction, taking alternate mouthfuls of pickled herring and green salad.

I read somewhere that how we shave in the morning has its own philosophy, too. Otherwise, we couldn’t survive.

Civilization is communication," the doctor said. "That which is not expressed doesn't exist. Understand? A big fat zero." -from "Hear the Wind Sing

Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end.

Is there anything in this world that can’t be lost?” “I believe there is. You should too.

There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all.” “Who said that?

Of course I know. But why pinball?” “Why? This world is rife with matters philosophy cannot explain.

I swear with my hand on this room’s most sacred book, the alphabetized telephone directory, to speak the honest truth. Namely, that human existence is a hollow sham.

I believed in all seriousness that by converting my life into numbers I might be able to get through to people. That having something to communicate could stand as proof I really existed.

The air flowed at a leisurely pace, like a flock of birds flying from tree to tree. It skimmed the wooded slopes along the railroad line, crossed the tracks, and passed through the grove without so much as ruffling a leaf. A cuckoo’s sharp cry cut through the gentle light like an arrow and disappeared over the distant ridge. The undulating hills resembled a giant sleeping cat, curled up in a warm pool of time.

I swear with my hand on this room’s most sacred book, the alphabetized telephone directory, to speak the honest truth. Namely, that human existence is a hollow sham. And that, yes, salvation is possible. In the very beginning our hollowness was incomplete. It is we who completed it through unstinting effort, piling one struggle on top of another until every last shred of meaning was worn away. I have no intention of using my writing to detail each painstaking step in this erosion. That would be a waste of my time. Those of you who want to read about that should turn to Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe. It is all written there.

Then, at the very moment the darkness was swept away by the clear morning sunlight like a tablecloth yanked from a table, the Rat fell into bed and slept—his pain, with no other place to go, stretched out beside him.

When I go back to the town in summer, I walk the same streets we did and sit on the stone steps of the same warehouse and look at the ocean. Sometimes I want to cry, but the tears don't come. It's that kind of a thing.

Yeah. We all die. But it’ll take another fifty years. And, to be blunt, fifty years spent thinking is a helluva lot more exhausting than five thousand years of living without using your brain, right?” No argument there.

But everything had passed with the flow of time. At an almost unbelievable pace. What had once been a violent, panting flood of emotion had suddenly withdrawn, leaving behind a heap of what felt like meaningless old dreams.

had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl’s skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams.

I didn't know it would get this hot," she said. "It's hot as hell." "Hell is hotter." "Sounds like you've been there." "I've heard it from someone. They make it hotter and hotter till you think you'll go crazy; then they move you someplace cooler for a while. Then when you're recovered a little they move you back again." "So hell it's like a sauna." "Yeah, more or less. But a few can't recover and go totally bonkers." "So what happens to them?" "They get sent up to heaven, where they're forced to paint the walls. You see, the walls in heaven have to be kept a perfect white. As a result, they have to keep painting from dawn till dusk every day. It messes up their respiratory systems big time.

So why are they fighting? Political differences, right?" 208 grilled me. "I guess you could say that." "So their ideas are in conflict?" continued 208. "Yes. But then you could say that there are 1.2 million conflicting ideas in the world. Probably more." "So then it's almost impossible to be friends with anyone?" That was 209. "That's true," I said. "It's just about impossible to be friends." This was my lifestyle in the 1970s. Prophesied by Dostoevsky, consolidated by yours truly.

See you around," I said. "See you around," said one. "See you around," said the other. The phrase echoed in my heart for a long while. The bus door closed with a bang, and then they were waving to me from the window. Everything repeats itself...

Why'd you quit?" "I guess I was fed up with the whole thing. But I gave it my best shot. Surprised myself, really. I learned to think about people other than me, but in the end I just got kicked around by a cop. The way I see it, sooner or later everyone returns to his post. Except yours truly. For me, it was a game of musical chairs -- there was no place I could call my own." "So what'll you do now?" The Rat toweled off his feet. "I might write a novel," he said a moment later. "What do you think?" "I think it's a great idea." The Rat nodded. "What kind of novel?" "A good novel. From where I stand, anyway. I doubt I have any special talent for writing, but if I stick with it at least I can become more enlightened. Otherwise, what's the point, right?" "Right." "So the novel will be for myself. Or maybe for the cicadas." "The cicadas?" "Yeah.

It contained a long, narrow desk with a glass top, and on that…three ceramic beer mugs. They were stuffed with all sorts of things—pencils, rulers, drafting pens. On a tray were erasers, a paperweight, ink remover, old receipts, adhesive tape, paper clips of many colors…a pencil sharpener and postage stamps.

Anyway, I just love stories about faraway towns. I stash some of them away in my mind, like a bear preparing for hibernation. If I close my eyes, I can picture the streets, line them with dwellings, hear the voices of the residents. I can even feel the gentle yet unmistakable rhythms of their lives, distant people whose paths I may never cross

Di nuovo restammo in silenzio. Ciò che avevamo condiviso era solo un frammento di tempo, tempo defunto da un’eternità. Eppure un barlume di quei cari ricordi restava ancora nel mio cuore, come una luce del passato. Per una breve stagione sarei avanzato lungo quel raggio di luce, finché la morte non fosse arrivata per risucchiarmi di nuovo nel nulla.

It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born. My style in Japanese differs from Tanizaki’s, as it does from Kawabata’s. That is only natural. After all, I’m another guy, an independent writer named Haruki Murakami. —

It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the tough of a girl's skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams. But non of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place.

Language is very tough, though, a tenacity that is backed up by a long history. However it is treated, its autonomy cannot be lost or seriously damaged, even if that treatment is rather rough. It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.

They are totally in the dark, the whole lot of them. They only pretend to think about important stuff...Sure, they have to use their brains a little to get rich in the first place, but once they make it it's a piece of cake--they don't need to think anymore. Like an orbiting satellite doesn't need gas. They just keep going round and round, always over the same damn place.

I believed in all seriousness that by converting my life into numbers I might be able to get through to people. That having something to communicate could stand as proof I really existed. Of course, no one had the slightest interest in how many cigarettes I had smoked, or the number of stairs I had climbed, or the size of my penis. When I realized this, I lost my raison d’être and became utterly alone.

In the warm breeze, the light wavered. The air flowed at a leisurely pace, like a flock of birds flying from tree to tree. It skimmed the wooded slopes along the railroad line, crossed the tracks, and passed through the grove without so much as ruffling a leaf. A cuckoo's sharp cry cut through the gentle light like an arrow and disappeared over the distant ridge. The undulating hills resembled a giant sleeping cat, curled up in a warm pool of time.

There was a time when everyone wanted to be cool. Toward the end of high school, I decided to express only half of what I was really feeling. I can't recall the initial reason, but for the next several years this was how I behaved. At which point I discovered that I had turned into a person incapable of expressing more than half of what he felt. I don't know what that has to do with being cool. But if a fridge that has to be defrosted all year round can be called cool, then that's what I was.

Il existe certaines similitudes entre le développement des flippers et l'ascension de Hitler. Dans les deux cas, leur apparition avait quelque chose de louche. On crut d'abord qu leur naissance ne produirait que de simples bulles sur l'écume du temps. Et c'est en raison de la vitesse de leur évolution plus que pour leur existence elle-même qu'ils acquirent leur aura mythique. Cette évolution s'appuyait sur trois facteurs : la technologie, les capitaux, et, enfin, les instincts primitifs des hommes.

If it’s art or literature you’re interested in, I suggest you read the Greeks. Pure art exists only in slave-owning societies. The Greeks had slaves to till their fields, prepare their meals, and row their galleys while they lay about on sun-splashed Mediterranean beaches, composing poems and grappling with mathematical equations. That’s what art is. If you’re the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o’clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly. That’s who I am.

Almost nothing can be gained from pinball. The only payoff is a numerical substitution for pride. The loses, however, are considerable. You could probably erect bronze statues of every American president (assuming you are willing to include Richard Nixon) with the coins you will lose, while your lost time is irreplaceable. When you are standing before the machine engaged in your solitary act of consumption, another guy is plowing through Proust, while still another guy is doing some heavy petting with his girlfriend while watching "True Grit" at the local drive-in. They're the ones who may wind up becoming groundbreaking novelists or happily married men. No, pinball leads nowhere. The only result is a glowing replay light. Replay, replay, replay — it makes you think the whole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity. We know very little of eternity, although we can infer its existence. The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression. It involves not the expansion of the ego but its diminution. Not analysis but all-embracing acceptance. If it's self-expression, ego expansion or analysis you're after, the tilt light will exact its unsparing revenge. Have a nice game!

I took a long look at my reflection in the window. My eyes were a bit hollow with fever. I could live with that. And my jaw was dark with five o’clock (five thirty, actually) shadow. I could live with that too. The problem was that the face I saw wasn’t my face at all. It was the face of the twenty-four-year-old guy you sometimes sit across from on the train. My face and my soul were lifeless shells, of no significance to anyone. My soul passes someone else’s on the street. Hey, it says. Hey, the other responds. Nothing more. Neither waves. Neither looks back. If I stuck gardenias in my ears and flippers on my hands some people might stop and turn around. But that would be it. Three steps more and they would already have forgotten me. Their eyes saw nothing, not a damn thing. And mine were no different. I felt empty. Maybe I had nothing left to give.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

To make a fresh start, the first thing I had to do was get rid of my stack of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. As long as they were sitting in front of me, what I was doing felt like “literature.” In their place, I pulled out my old Olivetti typewriter from the closet. Then, as an experiment, I decided to write the opening of my novel in English. Since I was willing to try anything, I figured, why not give that a shot? Needless to say, my ability in English composition didn’t amount to much. My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax. I could only write in simple, short sentences. Which meant that, however complex and numerous the thoughts running around my head, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me. The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, everything arranged to fit a container of limited size. The result was a rough, uncultivated kind of prose. As I struggled to express myself in that fashion, however, step by step, a distinctive rhythm began to take shape. Since I was born and raised in Japan, the vocabulary and patterns of the Japanese language had filled the system that was me to bursting, like a barn crammed with livestock. When I sought to put my thoughts and feelings into words, those animals began to mill about, and the system crashed.

It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of the language in every way they can imagine -without that adventorous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.

It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine -without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.