One day, out of the blue, she called home and told her husband, "You will be receiving the necessary papers for divorce. Please sign, seal, and send back to me." Would she care to explain, her husband asked, what was the reason? "I've lost all love for you - in any way, shape, or form." Oh? said her husband. Was there no room for discussion? "Sorry, none, absolutely none."

Lederhosen ~ Haruki Murakami

Until now I had imagined sleep as a kind of model for death.
I had imagined death as an extension of sleep.
A sleep devoid of all consciousness.
Eternal rest.
A total blackout.

But now I wondered if I had been wrong.
Perhaps death was a state entirely unlike sleep, something that belonged to a different category altogether - like the deep, endless, wakeful darkness I was seeing now.

No, that would be too terrible.
If the state of death was not to be a rest for us, then what was going to redeem this imperfect life of ours, so fraught with exhaustion?
Finally, though, no one knows what death is. Who has ever truly seen it?
No one.
Except those who are dead. No one living knows what death is like.
They can only guess.
And the best guess is still a guess.
Maybe death is a kind of rest, but reasoning can't tell us that.
The only way to find out what death is to die.
Death can be anything at all.

Sleep ~ Haruki Murakami

I love my son, no question.
But I sensed that someday I would no longer be able to love this boy with the same intensity.
Not a very maternal thought.
Most mothers never have thoughts like that.
But as I stood there looking at him asleep, I knew with absolute certainty that one day I would come to despise him.

The thought made me terribly sad.

Sleep ~ Haruki Murakami

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

There's just one thing I'd like to get clear, though. Which is that I do not lust after you sexually as a woman. Like I told you, I am angry at the fact that I am only myself and nothing else. Being a solitary entity is dreadfully depressing. Hence I do not seek to sleep with you, a solitary individual.

If, however, you were to divide to two, and I split into two as well, and we four all shared the same bed together, wouldn't that be something! Don't you think?

The Kangaroo Communique' ~ Haruki Murakami

Shall I put it on the line?

I want to be able to be in two places at once.
That is my one and only wish. Other than that, there's not a single thing I desire.

Yet being who and what I am, my singularity hampers this desire of mine.
An unhappy lot, don't you think? My wish, if anything, is rather unassuming.
I don't want to be the ruler of the world, nor do I want to be an artist of genius.
I merely want to exist in two places simultaneously.
Got it? Not three, not four, only two.
I want to be roller-skating while I'm listening to an orchestra at a concert hall.
I want to be a McDonald's Quarter Pounder and still be a clerk in the product-control section of the department store.
I want to sleep with you and be sleeping with my girlfriend all the while.
I want to lead a general existence and yet be a distinct, separate entity.

The Kangaroo Communique' ~ Haruki Murakami

Now, what is this Nobility of Imperfection?, you may ask- who wouldn't ask?
Well, simply put, the Nobility of Imperfection might mean nothing so much as the proposition that someone in effect forgives someone else.
I forgive the kangaroos, the kangaroos forgive you, you forgive me- to cite but one example.

Uh-huh.

This cycle, however, is not perpetual. At some point, the kangaroos might take it into their heads not to forgive you. Please don't get angry at the kangaroos just because of that, though.
It's not the kangaroos' fault and it's not your fault. Nor, for that matter, is it my fault.
The kangaroos have their own pressing circumstances.
And I ask you, what kind of person is it who can blame a kangaroo?

The Kangaroo Communique' ~ Haruki Murakami

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

Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.
Oh, well. It would have started "Once upon a time" and ended " A sad story, don't you think?"

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
The Elephant Vanishes ~ Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harajuku neighborhood, I walk past the 100% perfect girl.
Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in anyway. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl", properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: she is the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Opening lines, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
The Elephant Vanishes ~ Haruki Murakami