Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

What I mean to say is that in a highly exceptional reality—this ridiculously slick elevator a case in point—the non-exceptional can, for convenience sake, be written off as paradoxically exceptional.

“My research is purely for the specialist. Nobody’s got any interest in acoustics anyway,”

That’s because sound is of no use to human evolution. In fact, it gets in the way. So we’re going t’wipe sound out, morning to night.”

Finally, I could concentrate on Lauren Bacall.

What do people do with so much time in this Town?

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn’t stop it. I was going to sleep.

My luck that Godard films were no longer fashionable.

“Why do you drink so much?” she wanted to know. “It makes me feel brave,” I said. “I’m scared too, but you don’t see me drinking.” “Your ‘scared’ and my ‘scared’ are two different things.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. “As you get older, you don’t recover from things so easy.” “And as you get older, you also get tired?” “Yeah,” I said, “you get tired.”

screaming down the road on a Chopped Hog to a full-blast charge of Born to Be Wild, blurring into I Heard It through the Grapevine. Similar intros—different movie?

Still, getting a penis to erect itself is not the sole purpose of life.

Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.

“Listen. I may not be much, but I’m all I’ve got.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

“Great,” she said. “I never trust people with no appetite. It’s like they’re always holding something back on you, don’t you think?”

Pigeons are survivors by their own pigeonness.