Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

by Haruki Murakami

That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. What’s really important in life is always the things that are secondary.

All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose

A simple toothache, or stiff shoulders, and you can’t play the piano well.

If talent’s the foundation you rely on, and yet it’s so unreliable that you have no idea what’s going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?”

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” “Not really. I’ve watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.”

As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”