..finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.
Haruki MurakamiInside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years-- all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held-- all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.
Haruki MurakamiI laughed. โYouโre too young to be so โฆ pessimistic,โ I said, using the English word. โPessi-what?โ โPessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.โ โPessimistic โฆ pessimistic โฆโ She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. โIโm only sixteen,โ she said, โand I donโt know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If Iโm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.
Haruki MurakamiOne listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.
Haruki MurakamiI hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.
Haruki Murakami