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People who love cats naturally like other cat lovers.
“I keep a notebook and pencil at my bedside, and as soon as I wake up, I write down my dreams. Even when I’m busy and pressed for time. When I have really intense dreams in the middle of the night and wake up, I fight the urge to fall asleep and instead I write them down in as much detail as I can. Since most of those are really important dreams and teach me a lot of important things.”
I think everyone in the world has secrets. They’re necessary for people to survive in this world.
“People there all have shadows with them.”
When something is perfect, where are you supposed to head to then?
This might be one of the issues with eternity—not knowing where you should go next. But how much value was there in a love that didn’t seek the eternal?
“When you have a plate on top of your head it’s best not to look up at the sky.”
“That’s the part I like about you.” “That my head doesn’t get all twisted up inside?” “Not that. I like that you just listen to me without trying to analyze things or give advice.”
Seventeen, and in love, on a beautiful Sunday in May, of course I didn’t have any doubts.
“A lot of things take time.”
Time passes ever so slowly, yet it doesn’t rewind.
Regularity is key to a single life—even if at times it was hard to draw a line between regularity and tedium.
Once fear takes root in your heart it’s not easy to overcome.”
Maybe the person most puzzled about me was…me.
The river made a pleasant sound, and if I closed my eyes I had the illusion that it was flowing within me.
Maybe you’re better off not knowing things you don’t have to know. Maybe.
Nothing is more draining than uncomfortable relationships at the workplace.
Who was it who said loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance?”
Even in the tiniest rural town you can’t avoid all kinds of bureaucratic complications. Actually, the smaller the local government, the fiercer the territorial skirmishes.
From my own experience, I’d say the important things in life usually happen unexpectedly.
In the Psalms there are these words: ‘People are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.’
Even if he ended up doing nothing meaningful in his life, nothing worth mentioning, so what? He would be able to hand over to his child a kind of possibility, even if it was nothing more than a possibility. Wouldn’t that alone make his life until now feel meaningful?
Tears, like blood, were wrung from the same warm body.
Once you’ve tasted pure, unadulterated love, it’s like a part of your heart’s been irradiated, burned out, in a sense. Particularly when that love, for whatever reason, is suddenly severed. For the person involved, that sort of love is both the supreme happiness and a curse.
If the ball’s served to me, I need to hit it back. That’s the rule.
“Wednesday’s child is full of woe…,”
For some reason that morning I couldn’t even hear the sound of birds. Only the silence of the grave.
I seemed well on my way to becoming one of those lonely middle-aged men who follow habits without really thinking about them.
Many things in life are like that, though, if you think about it—moving ahead on their own without regard for the intentions or plans of the person involved.
“Single people need those kind of modest rituals in their lives. To get through each day.”
“I’m used to waiting.” She thought about this again. “I wonder if I’m worth waiting for.” “That remains to be seen,” I said. “But there’s a certain value in wanting to wait, even if it takes time.”
What is real, and what is not? In this world is there really something like a wall separating reality from the unreal? I think there might be. No, not might—there is one. But it’s an entirely uncertain wall. Depending on circumstances and the person, its texture, its shape transforms. Like some living being.
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. Time hadn’t come to a halt, but it had lost any significance.
The sound of her footsteps slowly faded away, and then I couldn’t hear them at all. All I could hear was the flow of the river. It was hard to imagine a lonelier sound than a river flowing at night.
However—there isn’t just one reality. Reality is something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives.
“Real or fake, that doesn’t really matter. Facts and the truth are two different things.
“That’s right. Your heart is seeking, and needing, a new direction. Though your mind has yet to fully grasp that. People’s hearts are not that easy to grasp.” Much like a young rabbit in a spring meadow.
Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement. Isn’t this the quintessential core of what stories are all about? At least that’s how I see it.
