1Q84: The Complete Trilogy

by Haruki Murakami

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.”

Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”

Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful – as painful as actually being cut with a knife.

Nobody’s easier to fool, Ushikawa thought, than the person who is convinced that he is right.