The Elephant Vanishes A Novel by Haruki Murakami On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April MorningThe Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's WomenThe Last Lawn of the AfternoonBarn BurningSleep+1 More
Barn Burning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami The first in agesFive barns worth burningI keep getting older
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami 100% perfect
The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Who I was supposed to beQuittingA regular wind-up toy world this is
The Last Lawn of the Afternoon A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami She was wanting to break it off
A Slow Boat to China A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Can you even call it memory?Never any place I was meant to be
Narcissus and Goldmund A Novel by Herman Hesse www.goodreads.com DualityFear of deathPain and joySuddenly the letter has a tailAll that is beautiful and lovely My own beauty reflected religionlovelife
Duality All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or a sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person – no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for the one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. balance
Pain and joy In the light of the torch, as he stared with great curiosity into the face of the screaming woman, lying there in pain, he was struck by something unexpected: the lines in the screaming woman’s distorted face were little different than those he had seen in other women’s faces during the moment of love’s ecstasy. True, the expression of great pain was more violent and disfiguring than the expression of ultimate passion – but essentially it was not different, it was the same slightly grinning contraction, the same sudden glow and extinction. Miraculously, without understanding why, he was surprised by the realization that pain and joy could resemble each other so closely.
Suddenly the letter has a tail I believe that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I’ll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer’s sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered. nature
All that is beautiful and lovely You are so handsome and you look so happy. But deep inside your eyes there is no gaiety, there is only sorrow, as though your eyes knew that happiness did not exist and that all that is beautiful and lovely does not stay with us long. melancholy