“All kinds of things are happening to me. Some I chose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other anymore. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevksy depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Here's what hurts the most," Kafuku said. "I didn't truly understand her--or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she's dead and gone. Like a small, locked safe lying at the bottom of the ocean. It hurts a lot."
Tatsuki thought for a moment before speaking.
"But Mr. Kafuku, can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?”
―
Tatsuki thought for a moment before speaking.
"But Mr. Kafuku, can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?”
―
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't some thing that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
Shan’s 2025 Year in Books
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