Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

"Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!"

"I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life."

"From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move."

"One guy yelled at me, 'You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. Ok, I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions. Am I right, or what?"

"When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity."

"...and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust. Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there."

"Maybe so, but I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than you are."

"If you think about it, an unfair society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit."

"It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you."

"I miss you something awful sometimes"

"No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here."

"I went on loving him just the same, and I could never be interested in anyone else."

"There was much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed."

"You want to know why you felt that way about me even though you didn't love me."

"Here I was, seeing you almost every week, and talking with you, and knowing that the only one in your heart was Kizuki. It hurt. It really hurt. And I think that's why I slept with girls I didn't know."

"Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood."

"I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning."

"Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world."

"Everything seems pointless since you left"

"Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car."