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I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

Haruki Murakami

I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

Haruki Murakami
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You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get.
Haruki Murakami
Allowing ourselves to become pure point of view, we hang in midair over the city. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. Commuter trains of many colors move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective identity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this dualism of theirs skillfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying neckties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, exchange words with their families, eat, defecate.
Haruki Murakami
It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it -- that they couldn't do it even if they tried -- I told myself, 'I'm different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.
Haruki Murakami
It's basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.''And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you're one of the few.''That's about the size of it,' she said mournfully. 'But maybe, if you're in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.''Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself /about/ is all those troubling things.
Haruki Murakami
It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye
Haruki Murakami
Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!
Haruki Murakami
Kumiko and I would visit their home and have dinner with them twice a month with mechanical regularity. This was a truly loathsome experience, situated at the precise midpoint between a meaningless mortification of the flesh and brutal torture. Throughout the meal, I had the sense that their dining room table was as long as a railway station. They would be eating and talking about something way down at the other end, and I was too far away for them to see. This went on for a year, until Kumiko's father and I had a violent argument, after which we never saw each other again. The relief this gave me bordered on ecstasy. Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.
Haruki Murakami
Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie. This was Dr. Tokai's personal opinion. It depends on the person, he said about the kind of lies they tell, what situation they tell them in, and how the lies are told. But at a certain point in their lives, all women tell lies, and they lie about important things. They lie about unimportant things, too, but they also don't hesitate to lie about the most important things. And when they do, most women's expressions and voices don't change at all, since it's not them lysing, but this independent organ they're equipped with that's acting on its own. That's why - except for a few special cases - they can still have a clear conscience and never lose sleep over anything they say.
Haruki Murakami
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