I went back to the sofa and started reading the rest of Anna Karenina.
Until that reading, I hadn't realized how little I remembered of what goes on in the book.
I recognized virtually nothing - the characters, the scenes, nothing.
I might as well have been reading a whole new book.
How strange.
I must have been deeply moved at the time I first read it, but now there was nothing left.
Without my noticing, the memories of all the shuddering, soaring emotions had slipped away and vanished.

What, then, of the enormous fund of time I had consumed back then reading books?
What had all that meant?

Sleep ~ Haruki Murakami