The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

“Some say the body is the temple of the soul,” the Gatekeeper said. “And it could well be. But for someone like me who deals with the corpses of those poor beasts day after day, the body is no temple, but a mere dirty hovel. And I’m finding I believe less and less in the soul, crammed into that pathetic vessel. Sometimes I think it’d be best to douse it with oil, too, like the body and burn it all up. I mean, it’s just a worthless thing whose only role is to live and suffer. So tell me, is my way of thinking wrong?”

our reality, too, seemed to proceed inside us, branching out down several paths. Different versions of reality mixed together, different choices became intertwined, out of which a composite reality—or, what we come to understand as reality—took shape.

Consciousness is the brain’s self-awareness of its own physical state.

‘People are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.’ ”

Sometimes numbers can be more eloquent than words.

The soul is a transitory state and nothing more, but nothingness is eternal. No—it transcends the expression the eternal.”

Believing in your other self is believing in you, yourself.”

Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement.