Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things.

“Everyone may be ordinary, but they’re not normal.”

Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

“I can tell Bob Dylan in an instant,” she said. “Because his harmonica’s worse than Stevie Wonder?” She laughed again. Nice to know I could still make someone laugh. “No, I really like his voice,” she said. “It’s like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.” After all the volumes that have been written about Dylan, I had yet to come across such a perfect description.

“As a whole, humanity doesn’t lend itself to generalizations. But as I see it, there are two types of people: the comprehensive-vision type and the limited-perspective type.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Neither do I,” I said. “Not yet.”

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.