Book Notes: Sputnik Sweetheart

Here are a few lines/paragraphs from Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami which tugged both my heart and my brain =)

- No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.

- "I think most people live in a fiction. I'm no exception. think of it in terms of a car's transmission. It's like a transmission that stands between you and the harsh realities of life. You take the raw power from the outside and use gears to adjust it so everything's all nicely in sync. That's how you keep your fragile body intact. Does this make any sense?"
Sumire gave a small nod. "And I'm still not completely adjusted to that new framework. That's what you're saying?"

"The biggest problem right now is that you don't know what sort of fiction you're dealing with. You don't know the plot; the style's still not set. The only thing you do know is the main charactoer's name. Nevertheless, this new fiction is reinventing who you are. Give it time, it'll take you under it's wing, and you may very well catch a glimpse of a brand-new world. But you're not there yet. Which leaves you in a precarious position."

" You mean I've taken out the old transmission but haven't quite finished bolting down the new one. And the engine's still running. Right?" "You could put it that way."

"I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so-I don't know-lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space. With no idea where I'm headed."

- Understanding is but a sum of our misunderstandings. In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion. Confusion, confusion.

- "So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to te grass grow-not thinking, in other words? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time. In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. boundaries don't exist So in dreams there are harly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.