The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Vintage International)

It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, and the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the win

“Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of. Please be c

The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment—perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one’s life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anythi

laudable

Weird. Food one minute, garbage the next.

Holding the wok, I looked at her. Then I looked at the box of tissues and the package of toilet paper. I had no idea what she was trying to say.

Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?”

Without a true self, though, a person can not go on living. It is like the ground we stand on. Without the ground, we can build nothing.

When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out—so far out you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”