Norwegian Wood Quotes
"Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail."
"Everything that seemed so important back then - Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone?"
"Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there."
"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life."
"The thought struck me that society needed a few people - just a few - who were interested in and even passionate about mapmaking."
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
"It was as if some thought had suddenly occurred to it, the firefly spread its wings, and in a moment it had flown past the handrail to float in the pale darkness."
"This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image."
"By remaining silent when my name was called, I made everyone uncomfortable for a few seconds."
"A university education was meaningless. I decided to think of it as a period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom."
"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."
"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."
"A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do."
"I realized that if I hadn't run into Naoko on the train that Sunday in May, my life would have been very different from what it was now."
"I've got pretty good intuition. I'm hopeless as a logical thinker, though."
"It's the worst kind of death - the person's in agony, the family goes through hell."
"I believe in him. Not that I'm that fond of him, but I believe in my father."
"I don't mind dying. You heard me. I don't mind dying."
"I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's."
"Just living here is the convalescence," she said. A regular routine, exercise, isolation from the outside world, clean air, quiet."
"The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient," Reiko said. "This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient."
"Piano was all I could think about. Maybe my finger would never move again. How would I live if that happened?"
"It gave me a wonderful sense of relief to be alone with him: I could forget all those terrible things that had happened."
"But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you take on all my troubles, and they're a lot worse than you can imagine."
"Life was still full of wonderful things I hadn't experienced."
"He said he didn't care, that he didn't just want to sleep with me, he wanted to marry me, to share everything I had inside me."
"We're all each other's mirrors, and the doctors are part of us."
"If you're OK with that, then it's OK. It's your life after all, it's something you have to decide."
"As long as I was with him, I would be all right."
"That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust."
"Life was great! I felt as if someone had pulled me out of a cold, raging sea and wrapped me in a blanket and laid me in a warm bed."
"To be able to perform music for yourself is a wonderful thing."
"After a certain age, you have to start performing for yourself. That's what music is."
"She was so young and beautiful, I felt overwhelmed to the point where I saw myself as an inferior specimen."
"She had such a quick mind, she could always keep a step ahead of you."
"Nobody likes hospitals, right? That's why people visit people in hospitals to make them feel better."
"We couldn't bear to be apart. So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy."
"We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due."
"It feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together."
"What makes us most normal, is knowing that we're not normal."
"Colours shone with an exceptional clarity in the rain: the ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, and the people wrapped in yellow looking like otherworldly spirits."
"I felt as though I had arrived on a planet where the gravity was a little different."
"Sometimes, when the world gets too hard to live in, I come here for a vodka and tonic."
"I want to get all comfy and drunk and not have any donkey shit anywhere nearby."
"It's just a hunger I have inside me. If I've hurt you, I'm sorry."
"Life frightens me sometimes. I've disciplined myself to where I can minimize them."
"People leave strange, little memories of themselves behind when they die."
"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."
"It's because I think of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day."
"What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant."
"You mean appearances can be deceiving?" she asked as she sized up a shot, smiling.
"All I want is to get married and have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies. That's plenty for me."
"It's so strange! I wonder why that should be?"
"When I'm lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness."
"The same process that takes him higher and higher leaves me going around in circles."
"I felt as if her side of the scruffy pool hall had been transformed into part of some elegant social event."
"I'm going to turn 20 soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were 16 and 17 has already vanished."
"I had this feeling that I wished I had had an elder sister like you - really chic and a knockout in a midnight-blue dress and gold earrings and great with a pool cue."
"I really liked the part about that girl Midori's father."
"I'm not very good at putting my feelings into words. That's why people misunderstand me."
"Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life."
"Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same."
"In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back."
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
"It wasn't my fault, she said. It was nobody's fault, any more than you could blame someone for the rain."
"All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it."
"No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one."
"True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn."
"Letters are just pieces of paper. Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish."
"All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk."
"Be happy. Take my share and Naoko's and combine them for yourself."
"We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live."