Ben He

“Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Under the sun the couple presented smiles to the world. Under the moon, they were lost in thought: and so they had quietly passed the years.”
― Sōseki Natsume, The Gate

“All he wanted from the girl was for her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace where the two of them could be alone. And he wanted her to tell him something—anything—about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that "something" might be.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84