Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

All quotes by author Haruki Murakami

“‘You’re here,’ I continued. ‘At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?’”

--'South of the Border, West of the Sun'

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."

--'Norwegian Wood'

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

--'Norwegian Wood'

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."

--'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'

"I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling."

--'Sputnik Sweetheart'

"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

--'Kafka on the Shore'

"Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting."

"For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense?"

--'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'

M: So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

W: Wow, and did your search pay off?

M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.

--'Norwegian Wood'

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. "

--'Norwegian Wood'

"These days I just can't seem to say what I mean. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her."

--'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories'

"I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"

--'Norwegian Wood'