Julia’s Reviews > Norwegian Wood > Status Update

“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

“You chose Midori. Naoko chose to die.”

“The memories would slam against me like waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place — a place where I lived with the dead.”

“Powerless, I could go nowhere; sorrow itself would envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was crying than that tears were simply oozing out of me like perspiration.”

“I had heard the nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn’t adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.”

“What I feel for Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.” 268

“All I could do was glare at the incomprehensible pages of print and wonder what was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around me would be changing. I felt as if the world was pulsating every now and then.” 267

“We got into her bed and held each other, kissing as the sound of the rain filled our ears. Then we talked about everything from the formations of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled eggs.” 265

“We have to go on unraveling the jumbled threads one at a time, without losing hope.”

“If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”

“It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.” 258

… I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass — but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.” 255

“In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain…