Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is

This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’ Like a little lost Sputnik?’ I guess so.

I was reborn," she said, her hot breath brushing his ear. "You were reborn," Tengo said. "Because I died once." "You died once," Tengo repeated. "On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said. "Why did you die?" "So I would be reborn like this." "You would be reborn," Tengo said. "More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms.

The best thing would be to break your neck, but you'd probably just break your leg and then you couldn't do a thing. You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody;d hear you, and you couldn't expect anybody to find you, and you'd have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and way overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself.

I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.