Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

“No. Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.”

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

“There you are. Humans are immortal in their thought. Though strictly speakin’, not immortal, but endlessly, asymptotically close to immortal. That’s eternal life.”

“Lay down your mind and peace will come. A peace deeper than anything you have known.”

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Love is a state of mind, but she has no mind for it. People without a mind are phantoms. What would be the meaning of loving someone like that?

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

“It’s not the best of all worlds,” says my shadow. “I make no promises, but it is the world where we belong. There will be good and bad. There will be neither good nor bad. It is where you were born and where you will live and where you will die. And when you die, I too will die. It’s the natural course of things.”

Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes, if you know what I mean.”

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.