From Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart-
"Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways - innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film - like a stick with eyes. I'd love to show you a photo of her but I don't have any. She hated having her photograph taken - no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man."
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"My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about," she said. "Images, scenes, snatches of words ... in my mind they're all glowing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born - I can feel it. It'll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere."
5 comments:
yea! murakami always good to read! nice quotes...
cheers..
The barn reference reminded me of Bowie's Five Years.
"My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare.
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there.
And all the fat-skinny people,
and all the tall-short people.
And all the nobody people,
and all the somebody people.
I never thought I'd need so many people."
your commitment to the privacy of the fashionably well-off aside, there was once a writer who wrote like this:
"He smiled so wide that his eyes would crinkle, with infectious warmth."
so, write again...
I remember reading one of his novels "Norwegian Wood". I couldn't help but draw a few parallels between what he writes about the '70s Japan and 21st centruy India, though, of course, his protagonists and their tumultuous societies seemed more liberal & experimental. But I always find his actresses somewhat fascinating: they seem to always live for this vague quest which is indescribable yet undeniable (I made all these conclusions just by reading one novel and reading your comment about one of them...now if I were you I'll call that jumping the gun!!!). Dunno what you think about them. I got really curious since I didn't come across anyone who had read him.
(Sorry about the prolonged absence from being one of your audience. I had real life stories to attend to for a change)
Good to see I'm not the only one excessively MIA.
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