1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)

by Haruki Murakami

Once it gets written down, the story is not mine anymore. You did a good job of writing my story. I don’t think anybody else could do that. But it’s not my story anymore. But don’t worry. It’s not your fault.

other words, the fact that the moon can drive people crazy was actually recognized in law.”

What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.”

attention. Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position survived: by minimizing her wounds—staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as possible.

What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. It was the only way.

crying. I’ll have to change my attitude again. I’ll have to put the rules ahead of my self.

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.

but it was the single piece of information left him by his mother, and, for better or worse, it comprised the foundation of his life. With that much now clear, Tengo was able to feel that he had lowered a great burden from his back.

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.

morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart,”

“That’s it. 1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.” “Who switched the tracks?”

The so-called Little People—or some kind of manifestations of will—certainly do have great power. But the more they use their power, the more another power automatically arises to resist it. In that way, the world maintains a delicate balance. This fundamental principle is the same in any world.

the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive.… The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil.

“But you would never have even thought such a thing in the world of 1984. Cause and effect are linked that way in a twisted form. You can pile up all the worlds you like and the twisting will never be undone.”

“You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials. Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be. That is all I can say. No one knows for certain what it means to die until they actually do it.”

“You, too,” Aomame said. Her voice had taken on the strange transparency of one who will deliver death. “You, too, are surely a very capable, superior person. I am sure there must have been a world in which there was no need for me to kill you.” “That world no longer exists,” the man said. These were the last words he spoke. That world no longer exists.

But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

than a ten-year-old boy who happened to be good at math. A new door stood before him, but he did not know what awaited him on the other side. He

And the lassitude that follows ejaculation enveloped his body like a thin membrane.

They knew the difference between thoroughness and overkill.

Clean and uniform, with every need supplied. But distant and devoid of individuality.

isn’t this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the time comes we say thank you and leave.

All he succeeded in doing was rearranging the items in the drawer, putting the paper clips where the eraser had been, the pencil sharpener where the paper clips had been, and the eraser where the pencil sharpener had been, exchanging one form of confusion for another.

with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something—or tries to. People need things like that to go on living—mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can’t explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That’s what I think.”

“Are you saying that they’re like a basis for us to live?” “Maybe so.” “I have such mental landscapes, too.” “You’d better handle them with care.” “I will.”

To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was almost too much for Aomame to bear.

A person’s life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked, and I surely have to bear some responsibility for those as well.

It appears that he and I are narrowing the distance between us bit by bit. Circumstances carried us into this world and are bringing us closer together as though we are being drawn into a great whirlpool.

nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their mouths in silence, each thinking—or not thinking—separate thoughts.

Above all, the style had a wonderfully musical quality.

After that, she wraps herself in the blankets and goes to sleep—her first truly restful sleep in a long time: no dreams, no interruptions. She enjoys the unusually deep sleep.

The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind.

Sometimes, however, she becomes unsure and confusion overtakes her. Am I really a maza? Couldn’t I have switched places somewhere with my dohta? The more she thinks about it, the less certain she becomes. How can I prove that I am the real me?

Ayumi. Why did she choose me, of all people, when there are so many others in this world?

“Cause and effect seem to be all mixed up,” Tengo said, recovering his presence of mind. “I don’t know which came before and which came after. In any case, though, we are now inside this new world.”

He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other’s emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him.

“If I learned anything in nursing school, it’s that bright words make the eardrums vibrate brightly. They have their own bright sound. So even if the patient doesn’t understand what you’re saying, his eardrums will physically vibrate on that bright wavelength. We’re taught to always talk to the patient in a big, bright voice whether he can hear you or not. It definitely helps, whatever the logic involved. I can say that from experience.”

He could no longer distinguish how much of this present world was reality and how much of it fiction.

the more tightly it was guarded, the more he had to pry it open.

She stopped moving toward death because she had heard a distant voice. At that point, she was in a soundless space. From the moment she put pressure on the trigger, all noise around her vanished. She was wrapped in silence, as if at the bottom of a pool. Down there, death was neither dark nor fearful. Like amniotic fluid to a fetus, it was natural, self-evident. This isn’t so bad, Aomame thought, and almost smiled. That was when she heard a voice.

Proust’s In Search of Lost Time?”

Wherever there’s hope there’s a trial. You’re exactly right. Absolutely. Hope, however, is limited, and generally abstract, while there are countless trials, and they tend to be concrete. That is also something I had to learn on my own.”

Number one on the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as Much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell. After he finished his coffee and was done with the paper,

“Is everything okay?” Tengo asked her. “Yes, everything is okay,” she said. “Just like always.” “Everything’s fine with me, too. Doing the same thing every day.” “But time is moving forward.” “That’s right,” Tengo said. “Every day time moves forward one day’s worth.” And what has gone forward can’t go back to where it came from.

Her name was printed in the telephone directory, but only a select group could actually speak to her. All others were flicked away, like ants who had crawled into the sugar bowl.

hoi polloi, the old man with the yellowed face seemed to be talking about a group composed primarily of two people: himself and Ushikawa.

Following the famous rule of Occam’s razor, I’ll try to find the simplest possible explanation. Eliminate all unnecessary factors, boil it all down to one logical line, and then look at the situation.

This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.

showing. Probably not standing out was her only way of protecting herself.