Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at her cerebrum-- the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Fiction Haruki Murakami

Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime.Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.Tengo went on, “Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Cultural Memory Haruki Murakami History Memory

I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Domestic Abuse Domestic Violence Powerless Powerlessness Sad Suicide

There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers. ... 1Q84 - that's what I'll call this new world. Q is for 'question mark'. A world that bears a question.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Parallel Worlds Science Fiction

Because you are neither an angel nor a god. I am quite aware that your actions have been prompted by your pure feelings, and I understand perfectly well that, for that very reason, you do not wish to receive money for what you have done. But pure unadultered feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth – firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon. The money is for that. To prevent you from feeling that you can do anything you want as long as it’s the right thing and your feelings are pure.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Bad Good Haruki Murakami Human

To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Haruki Murakami Sexuality

If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Aomame Haruki Murakami Life Love Salvation

Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami 1Q84 Mathematics Novels Reading