Shroug Muhsin > Shroug's Quotes

“She wanted to say "Don't leave me", but she couldn't do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I don’t know the right thing to do anymore. I want to protect Sophie and keep her safe, but what good is safety if she has to grow up in a world where people disappear without a trace because they pray to a different God?”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“If only I could fall
sound asleep and wake up in my old reality!”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on, living alone down there in the darkness...”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“The silence is so deep it hurts our ears.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Well, look. You're the kid sister, but you always had a good, clear image of what you wanted for yourself. You were able to say no when you had to, and you did things at your own pace. But Eri Asai couldn't do that. From the time she was a little girl, her job was to play her assigned role and satisfy the people around her. She worked hard to be a perfect little Snow White—if I can borrow your name for her. It's true that everybody made a big fuss over her, but I'll bet that was really tough for her sometimes. At one of the most crucial points in her life, she didn't have a chance to establish a firm self. If 'complex' is too strong a word, let's just say she probably envied you.”

Excerpt From: Haruki Murakami. “After Dark.” iBooks.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“She reads with great concentration. Her eyes rarely move from the pages of the book.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I'm scared to think there isn't. I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don’t think you have a particularly dark character.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Nothingness means there's absolutely nothing, so maybe there's no need to understand it or imagine it.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“Her dizziness has faded, but the rocking sensation continues. She feels as if her footing has been swept out from under her. Her body's interior has lost all necessary weight and is becoming a cavern. Some kind of hand is deftly stripping away everything that has constituted her as Eri until now: the organs, the senses, the muscles, the memories. She knows she will end up as a mere convenient conduit used for the passage of external things. Her flesh creeps with the overwhelming sense of isolation this gives her. I hate this! she screams. I don't want to he changed this way! But her intended scream never emerges. All that leaves her throat in reality is a fading whimper.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world ... over time ... little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that, I am a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“What I mean to say is probably something like this: any single human being, no matter what kind of person he or she may be, is all caught up in the tentacles of this animal like a giant octopus, and is getting sucked into the darkness. You can put any kind of spin on it you like, but you end up with the same unbearable spectacle.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example?"

"Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark