The Heartbeat Library Quotes

“Life is a succession of shipwrecks.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“Something about that memory moved him. It revealed the foresight of memory which, without us noticing, records life and presents it to us when we are finally able to understand it.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“My whole life I have not stopped accumulating evidence to stop things from disappearing, and, in the end, I have done nothing but reinforce their disappearance, accentuate the vision of this loss.” —CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“In the same way, every authentic feeling had to start and end with itself: joy had to be independent from the world’s response; happiness couldn’t depend on anyone else. Everything, essentially, was in seeking outside what was already inside.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“When we cry, we save ourselves a little.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“I want to die here." whispered the older boy. "Why here?" the younger boy asked. He sat down next to him on the riverbank "Because here I know the names of all the things.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library

“Shūichi hated houses full of things, which is why he drew only windows in his books. It seemed to him a contradiction: people bought beautiful houses, spent millions of yen so that the windows would face south, the wood would be cedar, and the ceramics in the cabinet would be from the most exclusive potters, but then accumulated so much stuff that you could no longer see any of it; even the light had to make space for itself like water seeping between the furniture and clutter.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Heartbeat Library