The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami

The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike.

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like a fun friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own—with whatever guts you can muster.”

Things that happened to either of us individually we now strove to deal with together as something that belonged to both of us. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. But we enjoyed the fresh, new process of trial and error. And even violent collisions we could forget about in each other’s arms.

I’m sure it enjoyed being cleaned so nicely and taken care of, and it wouldn’t have existed at all if Mr. Miyawaki hadn’t been nice enough to build it in the first place. Don’t you agree? You just can’t trust a house.