After Dark

by Haruki Murakami

“I’m kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn’t suit me. I’m more of a side dish—coleslaw or French fries or a Wham! back-up singer.”

From the time I was little, though, my parents always told me I’d better study hard, because I’m too ugly for anything else.”

I’m getting ready to turn thirty and I’m falling apart and I’ve got nothing in the bank.

Don’t people usually ask questions because they want answers?” “Logically, yes. But some people ask questions just to be polite.”

All we have to do is separate from the flesh, leave all substance behind, and allow ourselves to become a conceptual point of view devoid of mass. With that accomplished, we can pass through any wall, leap over any abyss.

I’m a lump of flesh, a commercial asset, her rambling thoughts tell her. Suddenly she is far less sure that she is herself.

In our house, we had the delicate Snow White and the hardy shepherd girl.”

From her point of view, I was nothing much more than a wall with human features that could respond to her now and then as necessary.”

I’m not pretty, and nobody’s much concerned about me. Talk about establishing a firm self: I don’t see where I’ve managed to do that, either. I’m just stumbling around all the time in my own narrow little world.

I didn’t spend much time with her, and we hardly talked at all, but I feel as if she’s living inside me now. Like she’s part of me. I don’t know how to put it.” “You can feel her pain.” “Maybe so.”

“She’s carrying around so many problems all by herself she can’t make any headway, and she’s searching for help. She expresses those feelings by hurting herself. This is not just an impression: it’s clearer than that.”

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness.”

all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep, to get away from the flesh-and-blood world for a while. I think I know how she feels. Or should I say, I know exactly how she feels.”

“Sometimes I wish I had been born beautiful like that. I’d like to try it, just once, see what it’s like,”

I’ve had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no.

“It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognising and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort.

Dualism is not as important an issue for the crows as for the human beings. Their single most important concern is securing sufficient nourishment for individual maintenance.

a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.