Michael > Recent Status Updates

“[W]hatever he was doing, he was pursued by an idea of greater freedom elsewhere, some emancipated life just beyond reach, one that would be denied him if he made unbreakable commitments. He missed many chances that way and submitted to periods of prolonged boredom. He was waiting for existence to part like a curtain, for a hand to extend and help him step through into a paradise regained.”

“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”

“Kind of a major paradox, wouldn’t you say? As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”

“The reason why dearh had such a hold on Tsukuru Tazaki was clear. One day his four closest friends, the friends he’d known for a long time, announced that they did not want to see him, or talk with him, ever again. It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise. They gave no explanation, not a word, for this harsh pronouncement. And Tsukuru didn’t dare ask.”

“Death now enveloped earthlings in the form of beautiful clouds. The high crimson and violet banks glowing in the evening sky were all toxic. An incessant seepage of invisible death. This springtime poison, scattered throughout the highest reaches of the sky, was falling to Earth, passing through vegetables and milk, and finally lodging itself deep within human bones.”

“It was as if the outer surface of the beautiful ‘fukai’ mask, invisible to him, had become his true face, while his original face, separated from the mask’s inside layer by a huge darkness, had turned into something else. The original face had assumed the form of his unconscious existence that, arising from a deep well of unfamiliar memories, directly confronted the enormous field of darkness.”

“It was summer the year before when the family suddenly awoke to the fact that they were all extraterrestrials who had descended to earth from their respective celestial bodies. This supernatural insight began with Juichiro, but within a few days it had possessed both parents and children. Even Akiko, who had just thought it funny at first, was no longer laughing.”

“She would like to assemble these multiple images of herself, separate and discordant, thread them together with the story of her existence, starting with her birth during World War II up until the present day. Therefore, an existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation […] Her main concern is the choice between ‘I’ and ‘She’.”

“Individuals, whether or not they were intellectuals, were entitled to speak and be heard. They needed only represent a group, a condition, an injustice. The fact of having experienced something as a woman, homosexual, class defector, prisoner, farmer, or miner gave one permission to speak in the first person. To think of oneself in collective terms brought a certain exaltation.”

At every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think — no less by books or ads in the Metro than by funny stories — are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. Thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things.

Everything will be erased in a second […] All there will be is silence and no words to say it. Nothing will come out of the open mouth, neither I nor me. Language will continue to put the world into words. In conversation around a holiday table, we will be nothing but a first name, increasingly faceless, until we vanish into the vast anonymity of a distant generation.

“Our wills — or maybe some undercurrent of our wills — are becoming one, creating this complex story and propelling it forward. This process probably takes place on some deep, invisible level. Even if we aren’t physically together, we are connected, as one. We create the story, and at the same time the story is what sets us in motion. Right?”

Admire without limits the simplicity and modesty of the great artists of the past, exposed to the arrogance of the nobility.

*

The public does not know what it wants. Impose on it your decisions, your delights.

CINEMA, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.

*

The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires billiance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.

“Be the first to see what you see as you see it.”

*

“An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.”

“Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart.”

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart.”

“He now saw the air chrysalis and the Little People as things that existed inside himself. Not even he could honestly say he knew what they meant. Nor was this so very important to him. The most meaningful thing was whether or not one could accept their existence as fact[.]”

“Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely.”

“I’ve never had the slightest interest in matters of the occult. People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth […] Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby’s arm.”

“If Big Brother were to appear before us now, we’d point to him and say, ‘Watch out! He’s Big Brother!’ There’s no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene […] The Little People are an invisible presence. We can’t even tell whether they are good or evil, or whether they have any substance or not.”

“When you introduce things that most readers have ‘never’ seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers ‘have’ seen.”

“Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theatre (actors, direction, etc.) and use the camera in order to ‘reproduce;’ those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to ‘create.’”

“A shootout at Lake Motosu? Beretta Model 92?
What was happening to her? Aomame could never have missed such important news. This world’s system was getting out of whack. Her mind went on churning as she walked. Whatever might have happened, she would have to do something to make the world whole again, to make it logical again. And do it now. Otherwise, outlandish things could happen.”

“Don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality.”

“… I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run — simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.”

“My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don’t, one or the other. I always keep that inner image with me as I write.”