Pinball, 1973 Quotes

“Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum -- a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive.”
― Murakami, Haruki, Pinball, 1973

“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“If you look at things from a distance, most anything looks beautiful.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Nah, I shook my head, things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that’s all.

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died long ago. Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claimed me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Good question, but no answer. Good questions never have answers.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“An old cat is a good friend to talk to.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“When it's all over, it'll seem like a dream.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I've somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Happiness is a warm friendship.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“No sooner had one season slipped out the door than the next came in by another door. A person might scramble to the closing door and call out, Hey, wait a minute, there’s one last thing I forgot to tell you. But nobody would be there any more. The door shuts tight. Already another season is in the room, sitting in a chair, striking a match to light a cigarette. Anything you forgot to mention, the stranger says, you might as well go ahead and tell me, and if it works out, I’ll get the message through.

Nah, it’s okay, you say, it was nothing really. And all around, the sound of the wind. Nothing, really. A season’s died, that’s all.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Where there's an entrance, there's got to be an exit. Most things work that way.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“I could go on like this forever, but would I ever find a place that was meant for me? Like, for example, where? After lengthy considerations, the only place I could think of was the cockpit of a two-seater Kamikaze torpedo-plane. Of all the dumb ideas. In the first place, all the torpedo-planes were scrapped thirty years ago”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn’t keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn’t work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don’t have anything to say.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“While you’re playing yourself out in lonesome dissipation in front of a pinball machine, someone else might be reading through Proust. Still another might be engaged in heavy petting with a girlfriend at a drive-in theater showing of Paths of Courage. The one could well become a writer, witness to the age; the others, a happily married couple. Pinball machines, however, won’t lead you anywhere.

Just the replay light. Replay, replay, replay...”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I’d close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people’s voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I’d probably never know.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“The past and the present, might we say, go like this. The future is a maybe. Yet we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us fair, we only come up with another indefinite maybe. The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Phone calls in the dead of the night never brought good news.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Like the song says, rainy days and Mondays always get ya down.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“If you can let it go at not understanding, that's the best anyone could expect.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street — what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!
That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“Good style, clear argument, but you're not saying anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973