Haruki Murakami

Unsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn't eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could evaporate any moment.

She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.

Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair.

Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.

I'm going to live to be twenty-five,' she said, 'then die.

To wit, existence is communication and communication is existence.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. 'Are memories such an important thing?'It depends,' she replies, and closes her eyes. 'In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.

All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?

There are symbolic dreams-dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities-realities that symbolize a dream.

Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.