1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)

by Haruki Murakami

You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.”

Of course he would not tell her that he had masturbated while picturing her. That would be in a whole different dimension than sheer honesty.

I’ve obviously been changing a lot over the past several months. Maybe you could say I’m growing up mentally and emotionally … at last … on the verge of turning thirty.

flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.

And depending upon how you look at it, possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than possessing nothing at all.

Kindness was one of the things presently (or permanently) in short supply in the world.

“Knowledge is a precious social asset,” his father said in a monotone, though his voice was somewhat quieter than before, as if someone behind him had reached over and turned down the volume. “It is an asset that must be amassed in abundant stockpiles and utilized with the utmost care. It must be handed down to the next generation in fruitful forms.

“I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend—not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I’m not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don’t know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

It is a kind of pain that no one else besides me can grasp. It has robbed me of many things, but in return it has given me much. Deep, special pain bestows deep, special grace—not that the grace alleviates the pain, of course. Nor can it prevent the coming destruction.”

“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.”

“Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,”

Money was not a living thing. It wouldn’t run off anywhere if he left it alone. Probably.

“I’ve been living alone for a long time. I prepare my meals alone as quickly as possible and I eat alone as quickly as possible. It’s become a habit.”

The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.’

Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

“Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once you were given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule.

“Well, I had to go on living. I couldn’t stay with him forever, taking care of him. I didn’t have that luxury, obviously.”

“I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect you. If there’s somebody I have to beat up, I’ll go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I won’t abandon you.”

I’m alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.

Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have no choice but to accept it in silence. There’s no way to pick and choose. Even in the world that existed until now, there was no choice. It’s the same thing. And besides, he asked himself, even if I wanted to lodge a complaint, who is there for me to complain to?

As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn’t much of a difference to begin with, he thought. Maybe we just decided, for convenience’s sake, to insist on a difference.

Working in an unfamiliar place, away from your daily routine, was invigorating.

Nobody’s easier to fool, Ushikawa thought, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

If you study for a few years in a mathematics department, you get used to that kind of abbreviated conversation.

If he remembers. This was one of the problems with math department graduates. When it came to areas they weren’t interested in, their memory was surprisingly short-lived.

Skillfully accessing a heavily guarded computer and extracting information was the job of a hacker. But deciding which information to extract, and sifting through massive amounts of information to find what is useful, was something only a flesh-and-blood person could do.

“Well, with facts what’s important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary.”

“Abundant talent is like a rich vein of water underground that finds all sorts of places to gush forth.

Tengo was an unaffected, straightforward young man, independent and self-reliant.

The presence or absence of human chorionic gonadotropin in urine indicated whether or not you were pregnant.

“If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset,”

“But once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality. You would do well to remember that.”

Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.

The flow of time wasn’t uniform anymore, the sense of distance uncertain.

The blame might lie with TV law dramas, which have conditioned people to expect lawyers to be both bright and attractive.

I’m not going to think of anything superfluous, Ushikawa decided. Be thick-skinned, have a hard shell around my heart, take one day at a time, go by the book. I’m just a machine. A capable, patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist.

I don’t know how to put it exactly, but there is a sense of time wavering irregularly when you try to forge ahead. If what is in front is behind, and what is behind is in front, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Either way is fine.”

“time in this real world goes ever onward. It never stands still, and never reverses course.”

“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.”

Every person has his set routines when it comes to thinking and acting, and where there’s a routine, there’s a weak point.”

“People need routines. It’s like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.

The most important things aren’t decided by percentages.”

There are lots of things ordinary people can do that I can’t. That’s for sure. Playing tennis, skiing, for instance. Working in a company, having a happy family. On the other hand, there are a few things I can do that most other people can’t. And I do these few things very, very well. I’m not expecting applause or for people to shower me with coins. But I do need to show the world what I’m capable of.

The pursuer’s blind spot is that he never thinks he’s being pursued.

All that is left will be memories, and eventually they, too, will vanish like dust.

I don’t agree. That’s not all there is to it. Knowing the secret may not take me anywhere, but still, I have to know the reason why it won’t. If I truly understand the reason, maybe I will be able to go somewhere.

all happiness is alike, but each pain is painful in its own way.

Everyone’s death should be mourned. Even if just for a short time.

Somehow the world survived the Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music.

Maybe we shouldn’t meet again. Tengo stared up at the ceiling. Wasn’t it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core—a tiny flame to cup one’s hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.