I'm scared. As I told you, I'm completely empty. Do you know what it means to be completely empty? . . . Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most.
Catalog
Book
Kafka On The Shore
Coming this October: Killing Commendatore, the much-anticipated new novel from Haruki Murakami Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers. Here we meet a teenage boy, Kafk
Characters
But if you look at it like that, we're all pretty much empty, don't you think? You eat, take a dump, do your crummy job for your lousy pay, and get laid occasionally, if you're lucky . . . Still you know, interesting things do happen in life.
I knew life was pointless, but I couldn't give up.
I'm not trying to die. I'm just waiting for death to come. Like sitting on a bench at the station, waiting for the train.
Whether you come to a place to live or to die, the things you do every day are about the same.
Necessity is an independent concept . . . Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy.
Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil—they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever.
A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical.
Well, think of what I'm doing to you right now. For me, I'm the self, and you're the object. For you, of course, it's the exact opposite—you're the self to you and I'm the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally.
If we reverse the outer shell and the essence—in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell—our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand.
Asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.
Strong and independent? I'm neither one. I'm just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.
'As long as there's such a think as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.' 'But even if that happens, you've got to have a place you can retrace your steps to.
Nobody can predict where talent's headed. Sometimes it simply vanishes. Other times, it sinks down under the earth like an underground stream and flows off who knows where.
If talent's a kind of natural energy, doesn't it have to find an outlet?
You're in love with a girl who is no more, jealous of a boy who's gone forever. Even so, this emotion you're feeling is more real, and more intensely painful, than anything you've ever felt before. And there's no way out. No possibility of finding an exit.
A solitary soul straying by an absurd shore.
Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love.
When your heart is closed, The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx, Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.
The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two.