That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.

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.

Of course you keep telling yourself there's something to be learned from everything, and growing old shouldn't be that hard. That's the general drift.

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.