The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

I hardly ever dreamed, and even when I did, the content eluded me, my dreams falling to pieces, scattering the moment I woke up.

Your eyes reflected the light from the stove. No, it wasn’t reflected light, but light that dwelled within you.

“This is the only reality. There are no others,” I might have accepted it. Like the crew of a sinking sailboat clinging to the mast, maybe we are only capable of clinging, desperately, to one reality. Whether we like it or not.

This was as clear to me as the first rays of morning sunlight.

he looked right at me, like some wise old cat.

Libraries existed to satisfy people’s thirst for knowledge.

Maybe people die twice. There’s a fleeting, trivial death here on the earth, then the death of the actual soul.

I passed in front of the clock tower, and as I did, I habitually glanced up at the clock. As always, the clock had no hands. It wasn’t a clock that told time, but a clock that showed the meaninglessness of time.