I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.
Haruki MurakamiWhat was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.
Haruki MurakamiWhere I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.
Haruki MurakamiNo matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.
Haruki Murakami