Michael’s Reviews > 1Q84 > Status Update

“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.”

“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.”