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The scene was soundless, the air a dense liquid. All he could hear was the soft beating of his own heart.
His own teaching experience gave him renewed awareness of the inscrutability of human beings.
To each web clung a small black spider, patiently waiting for its small prey to come along. Not that the spiders had any awareness of being “patient.” A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically predetermined. The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably.
He earned a high salary, but he couldn’t use it now that he was dead. He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar, but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning. The very fact that he existed in this world would eventually be forgotten. “Such a shame, he was so young,” people might say. Or they might not.
He might be in the presence of an authentic talent in its most natural form, or it could all be an act. Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people.
To a thirtyish company employee with creepy eyes she said she was here to meet someone and turned him down flat. She just didn’t like young men. They were so aggressive and self-confident, but they had nothing to talk about, and whatever they had to say was boring. In bed, they went at it like animals and had no clue about the true enjoyment of sex.
A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.”
That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth—firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon. The money is for that. To prevent you from feeling that you can do anything you want as long as it’s the right thing and your feelings are pure. Do you see now?”
The Well-Tempered Clavier was truly heavenly music for mathematicians. It was composed of prelude and fugue pairs in major and minor keys using all twelve tones of the scale, twenty-four pieces per book, forty-eight pieces in all, comprising a perfect cycle.
“I’m sure you’re right,” the dowager said. “Things are so convenient for us these days, our perceptions are probably that much duller. Even if it’s the same moon hanging in the sky, we may be looking at something quite different. Four hundred years ago, we might have had richer spirits that were closer to nature.” “It was a cruel world, though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren’t very many people who lived past
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“Even if we could turn back, we’d probably never end up where we started,” the Professor said.
The Genji warriors had boarded the Heike ships to find The sailors and helmsmen pierced by arrows or slashed by swords, Their corpses lying in the bilge, leaving no one to steer. Aboard a small boat, New Middle Counselor Tomomori Approached the Imperial Ship and said: “And so it seems to have come to this. Heave everything unsightly into the ocean.” He ran from stem to stern, sweeping, scrubbing, Gathering litter, cleaning everything with his own hands. The ladies-in-waiting asked, “How goes the battle, Counselor?” “Soon you will behold those
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“It’s like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn’t move.” “Marvelous,” Ayumi said. “The Tibetan Wheel of the
“According to Chekhov,” Tamaru said, rising from his chair, “once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.”
that people are able to learn is that they exist. Have you read Frazer’s The Golden Bough?” “No, I haven’t.” “It is a very interesting book that has much to teach us. In certain periods of history in several parts of the world—in ancient times, of course—the king was often killed at the end of his reign, usually after a fixed period of ten to twelve years. When the term ended, the people would gather together and slaughter him. This was deemed necessary for the community, and the kings themselves willingly accepted it.
“Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said. “Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.”
What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that I’m now an indispensable part of their family, that ties once formed will never be cut, Aomame thought. We are bound by artificial blood, so to speak.
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.”
“A candidate would be put in a square room. The only thing in the room is an ordinary small wooden chair. And the interrogator’s boss gives him an order. He says, ‘Get this chair to confess and write up a report on it. Until you do this, you can’t leave this room.’ ” “Sounds pretty surreal.” “No, it isn’t. It’s not surreal at all. It’s a real story. Stalin actually did create that kind of paranoia, and some ten million people died on his watch—most of them his fellow countrymen. And we actually live in that kind of world. Don’t ever forget that.”
“So what kind of confession did the interrogator candidates extract from the chairs?” “That is a question definitely worth considering,” Tamaru said. “Sort of like a Zen koan.” “Stalinist Zen,” Aomame said.
Nobody’s easier to fool, Ushikawa thought, than the person who is convinced that he is right.
But a sense of reality, the kind that would move her, was missing from the picture.
Like fish that live at the bottom of the ocean, most of her dreams weren’t able to float to the surface. Even if they did, the difference in water pressure would force a change in their appearance.
“Not very heartwarming facts, are they.” “Well, with facts what’s important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary.”
Through this, he discovered a number of important realities, including this one: most people in the world don’t really use their brains to think. And people who don’t think are the ones who don’t listen to others.
was always stuck between feelings of inferiority and superiority. I often used to think I was like Raskolnikov, except I never met Sonia.
But as a man of few words he was able—probably unintentionally—to conceal how boring and ignorant he really was.
Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
This was the northern frontier of reason. There was nothing north of here—only the chaos of nothingness.
“As long as you don’t mind the effort involved, you can learn how to best gather information and train yourself to think logically. Anyone can do that much.” “I can’t believe there would be that many people like that in the world.” “Well, there are a few. Professionals.”
Tamaki was different: she had a natural, cheerful smile. People meeting her for the first time immediately felt friendly toward her. In the end, though, disappointment and despair drove Tamaki to take her own life, leaving Aomame—who couldn’t manage a decent smile—behind.
really can’t say, though he didn’t seem to have suffered. His face looked very peaceful. It was like—a windless day at the end of autumn, when a single leaf falls from a tree. But maybe that’s not a good way to put it.”
