"

Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you

"

(When asked “Was the model for Midori (a character in Norwegian Wood) modeled after your wife?”)I showed your message to my wife. She got mad and yell...more

"

Count your blessings

"

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions tha...more

"

I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

"

No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief....more

"

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

"

I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now maybe, she's where s...more

"

Everything seems pointless since you left

"

I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the one I had first slept with in my third year of high school. Chills ran through me as I realized how ba...more

"

He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. "That's...more

"

Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.

"

Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth, I answered honestly. Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get ...more

"

No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here.

"

It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you.