Wind/Pinball: Two Novels

by Haruki Murakami

If one operates on the principle that everything can be a learning experience, then of course aging needn’t be so painful. That’s what they tell us, anyway.

My late grandmother used to say, “People with dark hearts have dark dreams. Those whose hearts are even darker can’t dream at all.”

“Civilization is communication,” the doctor said. “That which is not expressed doesn’t exist.

You see, the walls in heaven have to be kept a perfect white. The slightest smudge is unacceptable. It’s an image thing. As a result, they have to keep painting from dawn till dusk every day. It messes up their respiratory systems big time.”

I swear with my hand on this room’s most sacred book, the alphabetized telephone directory, to speak the honest truth. Namely, that human existence is a hollow sham. And that, yes, salvation is possible. In the very beginning our hollowness was incomplete. It is we who completed it through unstinting effort, piling one struggle on top of another until every last shred of meaning was worn away.

Their eyes saw nothing, not a damn thing. And mine were no different. I felt empty. Maybe I had nothing left to give.