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"You've always been fond of understanding people too well."      "They should arrange not to be understood quite so easily." ― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes
Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. − Haruki Murakami,  A Wild Sheep Chase
"In autumn, the evening - the blazing sun has sunk very close to the mountain rim, and now even the crows, in threes and fours or twos and threes, hurrying to their roost, are a moving sight." From Sei Shonagon's "The Pillow Book". Chapter I. In spring, the dawn. .. Translation by Meredith McKinney, Penguin Classics, 2006
In poetry there are no teachers. One makes antiquity one’s teacher. Provided he steep his mind in the styles of antiquity and learn his diction from the great poets of old, who can fail to compose good poetry?   − Fujiwara no Teika, Eiga no taigai  詠歌大概 ( Essentials of Poetic Composition)  As quoted in Conversations with Shōtetsu , translated by Robert Brower
If I didn't hold her tight, I felt, she would fly off into pieces. — Haruki Murakami,  South of the Border, West of the Sun
While they’re still alive, people can become ghosts.   — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
A story stays forever--if it is good and finds a place in the hearts of the right people.   — Haruki Murakami: In pursuit of new realism
The world order that had existed collapsed, and a situation like a kind of chaos appeared. I think that (my novels became popular overseas) because their contents match the chaos of the world. In a well-established order, the novels will not be accepted. — Haruki Murakami, somewhere in Asahi newspaper, probably