1Q84 Quotes

“Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers—passageways—for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don’t think about what constitutes good or evil. They don’t care whether we are happy or unhappy. We’re just a means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I'm tired of living in hatred and resentment. I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I'm not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don't know how to love yourself.
Am I wrong about that?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Her fingers still cold, she lifted the receiver. “Still reading Proust?” “But not making much progress,” Aomame replied. It was like an exchange of passwords. “You don’t like it?” “It’s not that. How should I put it—it’s a story about a different place, somewhere totally unlike here.” Tamaru was silent, waiting for her to go on. He was in no hurry. “By different place, I mean it’s like reading a detailed report from a small planet light-years away from this world I’m living in. I can picture all the scenes described and understand them. It’s described very vividly, minutely, even. But I can’t connect the scenes in that book with where I am now. We are physically too far apart. I’ll be reading it, and I find myself having to go back and reread the same passage over again.” Aomame searched for the next words. Tamaru waited as she did. “It’s not boring, though,” she said. “It’s so detailed and beautifully written, and I feel like I can grasp the structure of that lonely little planet. But I can’t seem to go forward. It’s like I’m in a boat, paddling upstream. I row for a while, but then when I take a rest and am thinking about something, I find myself back where I started. Maybe that way of reading suits me now, rather than the kind of reading where you forge ahead to find out what happens. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but there is a sense of time wavering irregularly when you try to forge ahead. If what is in front is behind, and what is behind is in front, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Either way is fine.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Every man would end up in Hell, if what they believed was truth.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“She thought of waking Ayumi to ask if there really were two moons up there, but she decided against it. Ayumi might say, “Of course there are two moons in the sky. They increased in number last year.” Or then again, she might say, “What are you talking about? There’s only one moon up there. Something must be wrong with your eyes.” Neither response would solve the problem now facing her. Both would only deepen it. Aomame”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“This man was a high-powered operator, but also prone to overwork. He earned a high salary, but he couldn’t use it now that he was dead. He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar, but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning. The very fact that he existed in this world would eventually be forgotten. “Such a shame, he was so young,” people might say. Or they might not.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“phalanx”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have no choice but to accept it in silence.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Tengo stood by the window and looked at the scene outside. Beyond the garden and lawn was the dark line of the pine windbreak, through which came the sound of waves. The rough waves of the Pacific. It was thick, darkish sound, as if many souls were gathered, each whispering his story. They seemed to be seeking more souls to join them, seeking even more stories to be told.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Tengo wasn´t certain that he was doing the right thing. Maybe the time he was spending here, in this room in a sanatorium far from Tokyo was meaningless. Even if it was, though, he didn´t think he could leave.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“De algún modo, el mundo ha sobrevivido al nazismo,a la bomba atómica y a la música contemporánea.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Not all guns have to be fired. A pistol is just a tool and where I am living is not a story book world. It's a real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Sa volubilité était une sorte de prélude intellectuel à l'acte sexuel. Les fonctions leur effleuraient le dos, les théorèmes exhalaient leur souffle tiède à leur oreille.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Slim young women were swathed in chic black dresses, here to attend a ceremony in one of the hotel’s many reception rooms. They wore small but expensive accessories, like vampire finches in search of blood, longing for a hint of light they could reflect.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“She imagined his hands, large and warm. Strong, but surely gentle.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Their dark silhouettes numbed the soft part of his brain, like a bee stinging and numbing a caterpillar, then laying eggs on the surface of its body. The bee larvae use the paralyzed caterpillar as a convenient source of food and devour it as soon as they’re born.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation wasn't his thing. If something really existed you, had to except it as a reality whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles Logic didn't give birth to a reality. Reality came first and the principles of logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“True, he was tremendously boring, which really got on her nerves, but that was not a crime deserving of death. Probably.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The exact same text was slightly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I've never seen a German shepherd that liked spinach before.'
'She doesn't know she's a dog.'
'What does she think she is?'
'Well, she seems to think she's a special being that transcends classification.'
'Superdog?'
'Maybe so.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Fukada was supposedly looking for a utopia in the Takashima system,' the Professor said with a frown. 'But utopia's don't exist, of course, anywhere in the world. Like alchemy or perpetual motion.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“When you get to be my age, you can stay alive eating very little,' she said. 'Of the finest food possible,' she added half in jest.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“You are neither an angel nor a god.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Any religion that would prohibit life-saving surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of the Bible cane nothing other than a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the line.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Tengo has an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and discovering the simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“When a vacuum forms, something has to come along to fill it.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut. Everybody was hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84