"South of the Border and West of the Sun" is a full-length coming-of-age novel written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in 1992. The following are inspirational quotes that I have compiled and collected for you, including Haruki Murakami's classic quotes from "South of the Border and West of the Sun". You are welcome to read them.
Siberian Hypothesis: The sun rises from the eastern horizon and sets across the sky to the western horizon - when you witness this scene over and over again every day, something in you suddenly dies with a bang. So you threw down the hoe and walked west without thinking about anything, west of the sun. He was so obsessed that he went without eating or drinking for several days, until he fell to the ground and died.
There are reversible and irreversible things in the world, and the passage of time is an irreversible thing.
There are many ways to live, and there are many ways to die, but it’s no big deal. The only thing left is the desert, the only thing that is truly alive is the desert.
But I didn’t understand at that time that I might hurt someone sooner or later and give her a serious injury that could not be healed. In some cases, the very existence of one person harms another.
In some circumstances, the very existence of one person will hurt another person.
The day of pursuit is the end, and the process of seeking is also the process of loss.
It is impossible to imagine—at least not with a real sense of it—what life would be like outside of this.
When I was a teenager, I always felt a little inferior about this. I felt that I was a special existence in this world, and I didn’t have things that others could confidently have.
I guess it’s because the adult part of her body and the child-like part fail to develop in a coordinated manner. This imbalance can sometimes make people uneasy.
If there is a difference between her and me, it is that she makes a much more conscious effort to protect herself than I do.
I always sit on the sofa and watch her every move. The record was put back on the shelf, and Shimamoto smiled at me as usual. At that time, I often thought like this: What she was taking care of was not the record, but the fragile soul of someone in a glass bottle.
Besides, it’s beautiful music. At first it sounded pretentious, showy, and overall a bit disorganized, but after listening to it a few times, the music began to gather together little by little in my consciousness, just as the originally fuzzy image gradually took shape.
It is not that difficult to pretend to be happy when you are in pain
Where in the world is there a sixteen-year-old boy who does not have his own problems? In this sense , as I approach the world, the world also approaches me.
We will accept everything about each other in silence, and there will be no uneasiness, confusion, or anything at all.
But I didn’t understand at that time that I might hurt someone sooner or later and give her a serious injury that could not be healed. In some cases, the very existence of one person harms another.
What is needed is a small accumulation, not just words and promises, but also small and specific facts that must be carefully accumulated one by one. Only in this way can the two of them move forward step by step. I think this is ultimately what she is after.
Even if it doesn’t happen today, it will happen tomorrow.
At the same time, it was a dream that Quan could not understand. What she was chasing at that time was another form of dream, another world.
What strongly attracts me is not the external beauty that can be quantified or generalized, but something underlying and absolute.
To be precise, I don’t love her, and she certainly doesn’t love me either. But loving each other or not was not an important issue to me at that time.
Maybe I can no longer be an authentic person. I made a few mistakes that weren’t even mistakes. Rather than saying it’s a mistake, maybe it’s my own innate tendency.
When I came to my senses, the political season was over. What once seemed like a huge wave that could shake the times has drooped like a flag that has lost its wind, and has been swallowed up by the pale daily life with a sense of fate.
Talking to her is never boring or embarrassing, it can be said to be pleasant. This is a rare thing for me. After talking to each other across the table in the cafe, I even felt like I had known her a long time ago. It's like a lingering emotion.
And I don’t want to hurt that girl in any way. I can only refuse. Of course, I never saw her again.
Every time I think about this, I realize this: In fact, we can only survive within limited possibilities.
To put it very generally, we are a generation that has eaten alive the idealism that was once popular after the war and rebelled against the more developed, more complex, and more sophisticated capitalist logic. However, the world I am now in has become a world governed by a more advanced capitalist logic. To put it bluntly, I have been swallowed up by this world without even realizing it.
It can be said that I still live a generally happy life, I think. There is nothing that can be called dissatisfaction in me.
You cannot take responsibility for someone else. This place is like a desert, and we all can only adapt to the desert.
On the way, I sat on the guardrail for a while and looked at a fat crow crowing at the traffic light. At four o'clock in the morning, the city looked very cold and dirty, with the shadow of corruption and collapse everywhere. I am included in it, just like the shadow printed on the wall.
In my previous life, I always felt that I would become someone else. It seemed that I always wanted to go to a new place, start a new life, and acquire a new personality there. I don’t know how many times it has been repeated so far.
This is growth in a sense, similar to a makeover in a sense. But no matter what, I wanted to free myself from whatever my past self held by becoming another me. I am pursuing this wholeheartedly and seriously, and believe that as long as I work hard, I will realize it sooner or later. But in the end I guess I'm not getting anywhere, I can only be me anyway. The shortcomings I carry remain the same no matter what. No matter how the surrounding scenery changes, no matter how different the voices of people talking to each other, I can only be an incomplete person. There is a fatal flaw in me that is always the same, and that flaw brings me intense hunger and thirst. This hunger and thirst have always made me anxious before, and I am afraid they will make me restless in the future. Because in a sense, the shortcoming itself is myself, and I know this in my heart. If possible, I want to become a new me for you now, and I should be able to do this. It may not be easy, but if you work hard, you can always get a new version of yourself. But to be honest, once something happens once, it may happen again, and it may hurt you in the same way. I cannot make any guarantees to you. This is what I mean by qualifications. I don't have the confidence to win against this kind of power.
In the past, I also had sweet dreams and fantasies, but I don’t know when they all disappeared. It was before I met you. I killed them, mostly by my own will and abandoned them, like body parts that were no longer needed. As to whether it was right or wrong, I don't know, but that was all I could do at that time, I thought. I often dream about someone returning it to me. I don’t know how many times I have had the same dream. In the dream, someone held it up with both hands and said, "It's too big, you forgot something." That's the kind of dream it is. I have always been happy living with you. I have nothing that can be called dissatisfaction, and there is nothing I want more. Despite this, something was chasing me from behind. In the middle of the night, I woke up in a cold sweat and suddenly opened my eyes - the thing I had abandoned was chasing me. It’s not just you who is being chased by something, it’s not just you who is abandoning something and losing something.
Content introduction
"Chu" was born on January 4, 1951. He was the only son born in the post-war "lump generation".
He lives with his parents in a middle-class suburb, where they live in single-family courtyards. At that time, families with only one child were very rare. Therefore, Chu was always labeled as "spoiled by his parents", "frail and sick" and "extremely willful". Even Chu himself had a deep sense of disharmony and shortcomings, and he even felt inferior. However, the appearance of Shimamoto, the only daughter in the fifth grade of elementary school, made up for Hatsu's sense of shortcomings. They liked each other inexplicably, and their conversations were lively and harmonious. Shimamoto seemed to be a small candlelight that illuminated Hatsu's incomprehensible heart. inner world.
When entering high school, especially after entering adolescence, drastic changes occur both physically and mentally. During this period, young people often fall in love to prove their worth of being loved in order to achieve psychological self-satisfaction. Quanzheng meets Chu's needs. Quan is a simple girl with a fairy tale atmosphere. She has an unpretentious warmth that naturally touches people's hearts. Quan becomes Chu's girlfriend. Chu, who was labeled "frail and sickly", started swimming after entering middle school and became stronger. "My body is undergoing unexpected and drastic changes," and he was happy about this. "I am seventeen years old, healthy, and about to become an adult." Chu urgently needed some kind of ritual to prove himself physically, and this was ***. However, although Quan tried his best to satisfy Chu's desire step by step, he ultimately refused Chu to enter his body. At this time, Quan's cousin appeared. There was almost no verbal communication between the two people. After meeting, they had sex. Through sex, Chu broke away from everything that had restrained him so far, and proved his growth on the physical level. As a result, Chu broke away from the shackles of his "past self", tore off the label of "only child", and opened the door to a new world.
After successfully entering university, I started a new life. However, college life was far from what he expected. It was completely boring and wasted all day long. He didn't even have much interest in the "school struggle" that was sweeping the campus at that time. Regardless of whether they participated or not, the political storm that swept across Japan left a similar imprint on the hearts of college students at that time. After the political turmoil, people's spiritual world is as desolate as after a flood. They give up their ideals and passively enter society.
Hatsu married Yukiko when he was 30 years old. With the help of his powerful father-in-law, he opened a jazz bar and lived a life of material wealth and spiritual emptiness. A few years later, when I was gradually achieving success in my career, I encountered a midlife crisis for the first time. Although he has a gentle and virtuous wife, lovely and obedient children, and a wealthy material life, everything is perfect. However, it is precisely because everything is too perfect that the "imperfect" Chube feels uncomfortable. While he is worried about the coming crisis, he is waiting for it to come. During this period, Chu ran into Shimamoto, an "only child" whom he had loved deeply in middle school, on the street. As a result, he rediscovered his childhood love and wanted to give up everything and start over with Shimamoto, but At this moment, Shimamoto mysteriously disappeared again, as if he had never appeared before. Chu had no choice but to return to his previous life, existing calmly and mechanically.