ranta > ranta's Quotes

“Music,' she said, in a languorous and dreamlike manner. 'Music is a betrayer of secrets; it is more treacherous even than dreams, which at least have the virtue of being private.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“And likewise I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people's lives a commentary on my own.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“Your failures keep returning to you, while your successes are something you always have to be convince yourself of.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had. The thread led nowhere, except into ever expanding wastes of anonymity. I could swim out into the sea as far as I liked, if what I wanted was to drown. Yet this impulse, this desire to be free, was still compelling to me: I still, somehow, believed in it, despite having proved that everything about it was illusory.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“...maybe it's just you become disinhibited. He'd felt this last night, socializing with people in their twenties. He'd forgotten how phsysically shy they were.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“...the way people feel forced to use English, how much of themselves must get left behind in that transition, like people being told to leave their homes and take only a few essential items with them.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline

“You wear nice clothes, you seek respect, you make a lot of money, but what's the point? It's all pointless. Of course, this kind of meaninglessness might suit this crappy nation. But, you see, we still have emotions like joy and happiness, right? They may not mount to much. But they fill up our emptiness. That's the only explanation I have.”
― Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“For a while" is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it’s a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself - as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the very maintenance of this chain that produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“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 Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.”
― Haruki Murakami , South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Often I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, scrutinizing every nook and cranny of my body.
I could almost see the rapid physical changes right before my eyes. And I enjoyed theses changes. I don't mean I wasn't thrilled about becoming an adult. It was less the maturing process I enjoyed than seeing the transformation in myself. I could be a new me.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I couldn't believe a girl had actually let me kiss her. How could I not be ecstatic? Even so, I couldn't be unreservedly happy. I was like a tower that has lost its base. I was up high, and the more I looked off in the distance, the dizzier I became. Why her? I asked myself. What do I know about her anyway?”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“She couldn't understand the books I read ot he music I listen to, so we couldn't talk as equals on these topics.[...]
But when I sat beside her and touched her fingers, a natural warmth welled up inside me.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“He has wondered lately if that's all living really is—one long goodbye to those we love.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“This low point isn't the book of your life. It's just a chapter.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Work is the only thing that makes her feel alive, and she’s wondered, on more than one occasion, if that means she’s broken.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“He thinks perhaps there’s a reason our memories are kept hazy and out of focus. Maybe their abstraction serves as an anesthetic, a buffer protecting us from the agony of time and all that it steals and erases.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Suradon on the tenth waati," she said, just to make sure she hadn't imagined it.
"Tsusano-ryu katas."
"And a smile," Wagara said and strode off to referee the next match.”
― M.L. Wang

“But... aren't we all children of the Empire?"
[...]
"Don't we have to trust our government?"
"I suppose so," Misaki said, and before she could stop herself --"if you really want to be a child forever. Do you son?”
― M.L. Wang

“I've lived my life unable to let go of all the 'what if's and the 'if only's.”
― M.L. Wang