Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction,”

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

“In ancient times people weren’t simply male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.”

“Mr Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence.

But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of – that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.

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.

You’re afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can suppress imagination. But you can’t suppress dreams.

reality’s just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life.

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

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.

The darkness in the outside world has vanished, but the darkness in our hearts remains, virtually unchanged.

Artists are those who can evade the verbose.”

The drowning girl’s fingers Search for the entrance stone, and more. Lifting the hem of her azure dress, She gazes– At Kafka on the shore. The girl who comes to this room most likely located that entrance stone. She’s in another world, just as she was when she was 15, and at night she comes to visit this room. In her light blue dress, she comes to gaze at Kafka on the shore.

“My grandpa always said that asking questions is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking’s embarrassing for a lifetime.”

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.’”

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s only a natural feeling.

“Nobody’s going to help me. At least no one has until now.

Sakura and Oshima definitely helped him, don't know what he's on about.

The more he thought about himself, though, the less reality his existence seemed to have.

‘Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.’”

“Listen – there’s no war that will end all wars,” Crow tells me. “War grows within war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that.”

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

But things in the past are like a plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back as it was, right?”

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. 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 a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.”