Men Without Women

by Haruki Murakami

Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong.

But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That’s the rule. It can never be exactly the same.”

Our actions aren’t based on specifics like that—we can’t pinpoint why we do what we do. Relationships between people, especially between men and women, operate on—what should I say—a more general level. More vague, more self-centered, more pathetic.”

there were two types of drinkers: those who drank to enhance their personalities, and those who sought to rid themselves of something.

So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.”

But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind.