Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm.

My cheap plastic Casio watch with an alarm and stopwatch will do just fine, and might actually be more useful. Reluctantly, I return the Rolex to its drawer.

The wife keeps up a one-sided conversation, her husband just grunting out a monosyllable every once in a while to let her know he’s still alive.

“From my own experience, when someone is trying very hard to get something, they don’t. And when they’re running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them. I’m generalizing, of course.”

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

“Hegel believed that a person is not merely conscious of self and object as separate entities, but through the projection of the self via the mediation of the object is volitionally able to gain a deeper understanding of the self. All of which constitutes self-consciousness.”

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

But things in the past are like a plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?”

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.