“ All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants. Ryū Murakami
“ But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what… Ryū Murakami
“ He invited me to his apartment in the wee hours one morning and pulled out a set of children's building blocks. It seems he used to ride around and around on the Yamanote Line with them, building cast… Ryū Murakami
“ That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this wo… Ryū Murakami
“ In heated rooms, he often felt the outlines of his body, the border between him and the external world, grow disturbingly fuzzy. Ryū Murakami
“ They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no r… Ryū Murakami
“ Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If… Ryū Murakami
“ These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life. This was not their fault, h… Ryū Murakami
“ To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and d… Ryū Murakami
“ Lady #1, Maki, had never once given any thought to what was really right for her in her life, simply believing that if she surrounded herself with super-exclusive things, she'd become a super-exclusiv… Ryū Murakami
“ This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and cl… Ryū Murakami
“ People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Ryū Murakami
“ When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with wheth… Ryū Murakami
“ When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone. Ryū Murakami
“ Everyone’s running around comparing wounds, like bodybuilders showing off their muscles. And what’s really unbelievable is that they really believe they can heal the wounds like that, just by putting… Ryū Murakami
“ When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on t… Ryū Murakami
“ Oba-sans, to put it in somewhat difficult terms, are life-forms that have stopped evolving. And anyone can turn into an Oba-san. Young women, of course, but even young men, even middle-aged men —even… Ryū Murakami
“ That’s what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion… Ryū Murakami
“ But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that. Ryū Murakami
