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'...her two lips, so sparing of words, had pressed upon his lips to impart a single all-powerful word, intoning an indistinct chant that was but a feeble echo rising from the depths of chaos and old night...she knew everything.'

These are the sentences that invoke the unwanted Paglia in me. "Incidentally," the woman's name is Camille (I'm skeptical of all coincidence).

"How to Tell Stories to Children" wrecked me. Good grief.

Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed.

sadness is pathetically limited to the range of thirst, it is just a sip of emotion, tightly buckled to a frown, unquenchable.

like ivy, we grow where there is room for us.

All of the darkness was inside me, and I could feel it glowing, like the volume of music when it shows you how to move.

We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which meant we were not alone in this world.

Theresa was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It's a slippery slope, and it's best to just sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you're not sure if you are one.

'You will never be a part of the world....Humans make their own worlds in the small area in front of their face.'

Every person is a separate world.

'...my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I'm in a hot tub with some other people and we're all looking up at the stars, I'll be the first to say, it's so beautiful here.'

I hate how this resonates with me.

We come from long lines of people destined never to meet.

You seem incredibly far away to me, like someone on the other side of a lake. A dot so small that it isn't male or female or young or old; it is just smiling.

Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.

People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

'What is the most terrifying hing that has ever happened to you? Did it involve a car? Was it on a boat? Did an animal do it? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I am not surprised. Cars crash, boats sink, and animals are just scary. Why not do yourself a favor and stay away from these things.'

Precious.

'It was a kiss with a future in it: like a ring slipped upon her soul....Susy remembered what she had seen through the circle of Nick's kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once the landscape at their feet and the future of their souls.'

Glimpses of what makes Wharton great, but the command of the page that made The Age of Innocence a masterpiece isn't here. Nor, frankly, is an arresting core.

"Their muddled ardour for great things was related to his own new view of the universe: the people who felt, however dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer to him than those whom it was estimated solely by one's balance at the bank."

Too relatable and real for comfort.

"Certain emotions turn false as soon as one articulates them, Yuichi had learned from bitter experience. He was subjecting his new emotion to the acid test."

Concepts can withstand corrosives like none's business.

"The usual men of the world...attract a woman with the text of a page. This young man attracts with its margins."

I live for the margins.

"When we fall in love we are filled with some sense of how defenseless human beings are, and we tremble at the daily existence we have led in blissful obliviousness until this time."

Don't I know it.

I don't understand Yuichi's character yet.

Upon his first encounter with his first male lover: "he took pleasure in the anticipation that he might someday discard his first lover."

Cold boy. And at the same time, sweet, despairing. At the mercy of stronger minds, who in turn are at the mercy of his incomparable beauty.

"His gentle spirit had always been capable of including love, but now it had become a thin vessel, not really meant for so volatile a substance. His heart was like a dark storehouse filled with ceremonial notions."

Brings to mind another author. That keeps happening.

Chekhov's Irina: "I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost

"All style, it is said, ages beginning with the adjectives. In short, adjectives are flesh. They are youth."

Old adjectives sag.

"The process in which a writer is compelled to counterfeit his true feelings is exactly the opposite of that in which the man of society is compelled to counterfeit his. The artist disguises in order to reveal; the man of society disguises in order to conceal."

Brought to mind, despite the difference in authorial concerns: "The Origin of the Work of Art."

'I've never run more than twenty-two miles, so this is terra incognita.'

Terra incognita. I liiiiiiiiiiiiike it.

'Duran Duran and Hall and Oates'

'The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.'

Gem.

Carla Thomas
Otis Redding

More music:

the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Gorillaz
Beck
Creedence Clearwater Revival
the Beach Boys

I want to keep record (haha) of all the music Murakami mentions. Starting here:

the Lovin' Spoonful albums: 'Daydream' and 'Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful'