A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, I only grow old, a pale softball of death welling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work filling their appointed rounds.

The Wind-Up Bird And Tuesday's Women ~ Haruki Murakami