venice, november 2012

"... so if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy.' 

'Unhappy? Why's that?'

'Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it. The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a deserted island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last for ever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best as we could. In the end, it didn't work."

*

"Every now and then, as I walked along I would stop, turn and heave a deep sigh for no particular reason. I felt as though I had arrived on a planet where the gravity was a little different. Yes, of course, I told myself, feeling sad: I was in the outside world now."

- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami