After Dark Quotes

“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, After Dark

“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“But why should you be interested in me?"
Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this moment. But maybe – just maybe – if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I have been told I've got a darkish personality. A few times."
Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, "It's not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There's shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don't think you have a particularly dark character.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“‎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, After Dark

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I'm kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish--cole slaw or French fries or a Wham! backup singer.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“It's my motto for life. 'Walk slowly; drink lots of water.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“So once you're dead there's just nothing?
Mari: Basically...
Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on, living alone down there in the darkness...”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“With luck, it might even snow for us.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“And her sleep was too long and deep for that:so deep that she left her normal reality behind.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You're born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you're both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities?...One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin...”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“If only I could fall
sound asleep and wake up in my old reality!”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Is it against the law for me to know it?”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Whoa!" he says with a smile. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. "Chicken salad a la George Orwell!”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialities.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark