"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"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)

"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)

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
— Haruki Murakami

"The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount."
— Haruki Murakami

"Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair."
— Haruki Murakami

"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)

"Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of."
— Haruki Murakami

"Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert."
— Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun)

"Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they’ve told me. Do you think that’s crazy?
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “I’d guess your method works quite well."
— Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase)

"In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness.
We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"I don't want to die without any scars."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"...the only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"
— Chuck Palahniuk

"When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"We'll never be as young as we are tonight."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)

"Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"...hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized yet."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)

"Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Most times, it's just a lot easier not to let the world know what's wrong."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"Give me lust, baby.

Flash.
Give me malice.
Flash.
Give me detached existentialist ennui.
Flash.
Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?"
— Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)

"You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. it is not a hobby. those who do it must do it. those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
— Jeanette Winterson

"There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name."
— Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

"Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone."
— Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)

"The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don’t give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it..."
— Jeanette Winterson

"Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet."
— Jeanette Winterson

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)