Murakami Day

Today, Haruki Murakami turns 64, and since I am a huge fan of his work, I thought a short post is required. Short due to the fact that I have to get back to finishing his "Kafka on the shore", a book about a boy who runs away from home, an old man that can talk with cats and... talkative cats, of course. More about the book in a future review, but for now, here are some beautiful quotes from his novels:

 “But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”(Norwegian Wood)

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”(Kafka on the Shore)

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
(The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)