1Q84 #1-2 (1Q84, #1-2)

by Haruki Murakami

Aomame nodded and leaned back in her seat. There was something about the driver’s way of speaking that bothered her, as though he were leaving something important unsaid. For example (and this is just one example), his remark on Toyota’s impeccable sound insulation might be taken to mean that some other Toyota feature was less than impeccable.

I can imagine how this could be come annoying.

If only her breasts were a little bigger, she thought with a twinge, she might have been truly perfect. A partial frown. But hell, you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.

Much in the same way that I wish I were taller. By a whole foot.

The prosaic thought never seemed to enter Komatsu’s egg-shaped head that a call from him might be disturbing.

Annoying people hardly think that they are that -- annoying.

“You can have tons of talent, but it won’t necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, though, you’ll never go hungry.”

If Fuka-Eri’s sole objective was to record things she had witnessed or imagined, setting them down as sheer information, she could have accomplished that much with a list.

The reading of a book is an activity that involves some continuity; it is carried out over a relatively long time frame. But in Fuka-Eri’s statement that “it takes time,” there seemed to be included a nuance somewhat different from such generalities.

Charles looked less like a prince than a high school physics teacher with stomach trouble.

She believed that an unbearable desire for a particular food meant that the body was sending signals for something it truly needed, and she would follow the call of nature.

“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.”

True.

There had been beautiful ones and warmhearted ones and ones who truly cared for him, but they had come and gone, like vividly colored birds perching momentarily on a branch before flying off somewhere.

By engaging in wild sex with unknown men, what she hoped to accomplish, surely, was the liberation of her flesh from the desire that bound it.

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 comb 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. It’s all very painful – as painful as actually being cut with a knife.

Growing older is this, sadly.

She felt as if he had, in an instant, stripped off every piece of clothing and left her stark naked. But his gaze didn’t stop with the skin; it pierced through to her muscles and organs and uterus. He can see in the dark, she thought. He is viewing far more than the eyes can see.

That is one hell of a gaze then.

“In most cases, one pain is alleviated or canceled out by another pain. The senses are, ultimately, relative.”

This is true although the author is hardly talking about a toothache trumping the pain of a stomachache.

“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.”

“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.

Unlikely to happen but sure.

By violently exterminating a being who was both prophet and king, she had preserved the balance of good and evil in the world, as a result of which she must die.

A heavy price indeed.

He experienced such a violent sense of déjà vu that it felt as if a metal band had been tightened around his stomach.