Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021)

I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.

Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Trascorreva i giorni senza capire dove cercare lo scopo e il senso della vita, senza nulla a cui potersi appoggiare”.

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.

Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

🥰

The world's going to end before we know it.

Haruki Murakami, from 1Q84, translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel (book 2. July-September)

The sky was a fresh-swept blue, with only a trace of white cloud clinging to the dome of heaven like a thin streak of test paint.

-- Haruki Murakami

(Zurich, Switzerland)

“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”

by Haruki Murakami

Murakami’s description of a Japanese forest in Norwegian Wood.

men without women, haruki murakami

Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021)

First Person Singular - Haruki Murakami

There are some things about myself I can't explain to anyone. There are some things I don't understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I'm after. I don't know what my strengths are or what I'm supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self- centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I'm not such a wonderful human being.

Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

"If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person."

–Aomame

—Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

If there’s any guy crazy enough to attack me, I’m going to show him the end of the world—close up. I’m going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I’m going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

If there’s any guy crazy enough to attack me, I’m going to show him the end of the world—close up. I’m going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I’m going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

"Something about this weird sense of absence—this sense of the existential reality of non-existence—resembled the paralyzing fear you might feel when you climb to the very top of a high steeple. This connection between hunger and acrophobia was a new discovery for me."

The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami.

In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Correndo com Murakami

Estou num café e observo um casal conversando em inglês, um homem de barba e óculos parecido comigo fazendo negócios ao telefone. No canto direito uma mulher de cabelos negros e curtos, com tatuagens nas costas e no braço. California Coffee. Terminei ontem a leitura do livro do escritor japonês Haruki Murakami, “Do que eu falo quando falo de corrida”. A figura do romancista corredor de maratona e triatlo destoa da imagem romântica do escritor como um desasjustado, anti-burguês. O relato de Murakami sobre suas corridas humaniza o escritor, fala das dificuldades, das limitações da escrita e como ela envolve disciplina, concentração e perseverança, mas do que talento inato. Em lugar do gênio artista, temos um homem comum, um artesão da escrita, que, obstinado e perseverante, tenta superar seus limites. Murakami narra seus treinamentos, suas maratonas e provas de triatlo e uma ultramaratona sem qualquer tipo de grandiloquência, numa prosa simples e amigável. E essa simplicidade que me faz sentir empatia pelo autor, além do que eu próprio me identifico muito com o tema, já que desde 2015 me dedico a correr. Ainda não cheguei, claro, ao nível de maratonista, mas já corri quatro meias maratonas, três delas em Salvador e uma em Paris. Havia lido apenas um conto escrito por ele, “Drive My Car”, da coletânea  “Homens sem mulheres”, que não me impactou muito. Mas talvez devesse lê-lo com mais atenção. 

"Could you get up, just for a few minutes? I don't know what the hell to do. And I miss your voice."

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami