You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.
Haruki MurakamiItโs precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being aliveโor at least a partial sense of it.
Haruki MurakamiI was confident that I was a special person. But time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received. I have only just learned that truth.
Haruki MurakamiShe waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that peopleโs hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows whatโs at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Haruki Murakami