After the Quake

by Haruki Murakami

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere.”

I’ve been dreaming about dying slowly in pitch-blackness, but even after I wake up, the dream doesn’t end. This is the scariest part of the dream.

“This life is nothing but a short, painful dream.

From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.”

“Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead,”