1Q84 #1-2 Quotes

“Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“You can't go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation,”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“It's not me but the world that's deranged.
Yes, that settles it.
At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already changed into something else. So far, the actual changes carried out in that process are limited in number. Most of the new world has been retained from the world I knew, which is why the changes have presented (virtually) no impediments to my daily life - so far. But the changes that have already taken place will almost certainly create other, greater, differences around me as time goes by. Those differences will expand little by little and will, in some cases, destroy the logicality of the actions I take. They could well cause me to commit errors that are - for me - literally fatal.
Parallel worlds.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Le pareció que aquella música había sido compuesta para enfatizar lo irreal de la realidad.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Finally,” his girlfriend said, “everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, I’m glad that’s not me. It’s basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.” “And those troubling things are all you can think about when you’re one of the few.” “That’s about the size of it,” she said mournfully. “But maybe, if you’re in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Karl Jung said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive … the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. … The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers – passageways – for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don’t think about what constitutes good or evil. They don’t care whether we are happy or unhappy. We’re just a means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Wouldn’t this be tantamount to giving a butterfly a skeleton?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do. You never have to starve.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Walking to the subway, Aomame kept thinking about the strangeness of the world. If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn’t our genetic purpose – to transmit DNA – be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Wo Licht ist muss es auch Schatten geben, und wo Schatten ist, gibt es Licht. Es gibt keinen Schatten ohne Licht und kein Licht ohne Schatten. (C.G. Jung)”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Fa quatre-cents anys, la gent veia la mateixa lluna que veiem nosaltres.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“¿Se puede ser amiga de una mariposa? —Para ser amiga de una mariposa, tienes que convertirte en un elemento más de la Naturaleza. Eliminar cualquier indicio de humanidad, permanecer quieta y convencerte de que eres los árboles, la hierba y las flores. Lleva tiempo, pero una vez que se fía de ti, os hacéis buenas amigas.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84: Libros 1 y 2

“His life seemed to lose its center of gravity – not that he had ever really had one, but up to that point, other people had placed certain demands and expectations upon him, and responding to them had kept him busy.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Una vez que se cuenta una mentira a la sociedad, hay que seguir mintiendo para siempre.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84: Libros 1 y 2

“There were two moons in the sky – a small moon and a large one. They were floating there side by side. The large one was the usual moon that she had always seen. It was nearly full, and yellow. But there was another moon right next to it. It had an unfamiliar shape. It was somewhat lopsided, and greenish, as though thinly covered with moss.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Some things can only be done in exchange for life,” the man said.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“The religion brings many people together, so some degree of discipline is necessary, of course, but if you focus too much on formalities, you can lose sight of your original purpose. Things like precepts and doctrines are, ultimately, just expedients. The important thing is not the frame itself but what is inside the frame.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“His hairline had receded from the forehead and his sparse remaining hair recalled a frosty meadow in late autumn.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Vosotros estáis ahí atados, no podéis ir a ningún sitio. Apenas podéis avanzar ni siquiera podéis dar marcha atrás. Pero yo no. Yo tengo un trabajo que hacer. Una misión que debo ejecutar. Por eso, permitirme que vaya pasando”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Tengo had a gift for such work. He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"

"It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“But things. never go the way you want them to, and this was no excepion.
The world seemed to have a better sense of how your wanted things not to go.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2

“Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 #1-2