The Strange Library

by Haruki Murakami

And ever since I was little my mother had told me, if you don’t know something, go to the library and look it up.

It was too weird—how could our city library have such an enormous labyrinth in its basement? I mean, public libraries like this one were always short of money, so building even the tiniest of labyrinths had to be beyond their means.

Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don’t want to do?

“Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that’s why. They’re nice and creamy. And sort of grainy at the same time.”

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.

The tricky thing about mazes is that you don’t know if you’ve chosen the right path until the very end. If it turns out you were wrong, it’s usually too late to go back and start again.