1Q84 by Harumi Murakami is so beautifully written

“I don’t have a thing except my soul.” – Tengo
You know when a book just hits you too personally? I can’t ever let anyone see my annotated copy of this book, is too personal.

How can I even start? This book changed my blood chemistry, is beautiful.
Some beautiful quotes:
“Are you afraid to die?”
“Not particularly – living as myself scares me more.”
“A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.”

Murakami’s portrayal of loneliness:
“Tengo looked around and heaved a sigh and realized the he was absolutely alone. Ushikawa had been right. He had nothing and no one to lean on.”
“I am nothing,” Tengo said. “You are right. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.”
“The only other customers in the room were a young couple, probably students sitting at the bar, engaged in an intense and intimate conversation, their foreheads practically touching. Seeing them, Tengo felt a profound loneliness, that sort he had not experienced for a very long time. I’m alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.”

The inability of loving someone:
“I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend – not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself though the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.
Do you understand what I am saying? A person who’s incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”
“I’m a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”
“A more pressing problem for me is that I have never been able to love anyone seriously. I have never felt unconditional love for anyone since the day I was born, never felt that I could give myself completely to that one person. Never once.”
Live your life for you and not for other people:
“His life seemed to lose its center of gravity – not that he had ever really had one, but up to that point, other people had placed certain demands and expectations upon him, and responding to them had kept him busy. Once those demand and expectations disappeared, however, there was nothing left worth talking about. His life had no purpose. He had no close friends. He was drifting and unable to concentrate his energies on anything.”
“No longer was he a math prodigy from whom people expected great things, nor was he a promissory member of a Judo team. He was a mere cram school instructor. But that very fact made Tengo happy.
He could catch his breath at last. For the first time in his life, he was free: he could live his own life, as he wanted to without having to worry about anyone else.”
This masterpiece is filled with beautiful and relatable quotes. Is full of the usual Murakami’s weirdness, but is worth reading.

by HumanYogurtcloset941