Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

Uplifting slogans and beautiful messages might stir the soul, but if they weren’t accompanied by moral power they amounted to no more than a litany of empty words.

Maybe that’s precisely why I wear all kinds of shoes that aren’t mine. Through that I’m able to discover myself in a more comprehensive way, much like triangulating a location.

Stories can exist as metaphors for reality, and people need to internalize new stories (and new systems of metaphor) in order to cope with an unfolding new reality.