Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

“What I think is this: you should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.”

“That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. As I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But

It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just as we see with Eichmann.

After cooking and eating a simple meal I go out on the porch and gaze up at the stars twinkling above, the random scattering of millions of stars. Even in a planetarium you wouldn’t find this many. Some of them look really big and distinct, almost as if you could reach out and touch them. The whole thing is breathtaking. Not just beautiful, though – the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. What I’ve done up till now, what I’m going to do – they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not only the stars – how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I’ll never outrun that awful feeling.

“Let’s go to the library, then. So you can become a part of it.”

and like many precocious young people they found it hard to grow up.

on a day like this when it’s closed it’s like the land that time forgot. Or more like a place that’s holding its breath, hoping time won’t stumble upon it.

Being bright has nothing to do with it. What matters is that you see things with your own eyes.”

People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.