Norwegian Wood

by Haruki Murakami

It’s just not possible for one person to watch over another person for ever and ever.

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. Translated into words, it’s a cliché, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists—in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table—and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.

He just happened to be the youngest son in a not-too-wealthy family who had grown up a little too serious for his own good.

There was no way to explain the truth to them, and no need to explain it, so I let them think what they wanted to.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

When you’re surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do.”

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Only assholes do that.”

“Just remember, life is a box of cookies.”