"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
— Oscar Wilde

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
— Oscar Wilde

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"The heart was made to be broken."
— Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
— Oscar Wilde

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
— Oscar Wilde

"I can resist anything, except temptation."
— Oscar Wilde

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

"Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays."
— Oscar Wilde

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
— Oscar Wilde

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy? "
— Oscar Wilde

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
— Oscar Wilde

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Listen up -- there's no war that will end all wars."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got ricing pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me, that is just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.
...
[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me here."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next. I worked at concentrating my attention on the real and useful. I would go to the pool almost every day for a long swim, take walks, make myself three meals.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"The law presides over things of this world, finally. The world where shadow is shadow and light is light, yin is yin and yang is yang, I'm me and he's him. 'I am me and / He is him/ Autumn eve.' But you don't belong to that world, sonny. The world you belong to is above that or below that."

"Which is better?" I asked, out of simple curiosity. "Above or below?"

"It's not that either one is better," he said. After a brief coughing fit, he spat a glob of phlegm onto a tissue and studied it closely before crumpling the tissue and throwing it into a wastebasket. "It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there you are."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

""Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.""
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that's just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."
— J.D. Salinger (Nine Stories)

""Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rule."

"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right-I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."
— Lewis Carroll

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

"I don't much care where –"

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go."
— Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

""But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
— Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle."
— Lewis Carroll

"I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.""
— Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass)

"One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others."
— Lewis Carroll

"Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from."
— Raymond Carver

"It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love."
— Raymond Carver

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud..."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)