Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1995) ("We live in an advanced capitalist society, after all. Waste is the name of the game, its greatest virtue. Politicians call it 'refinements in domestic consumption' I call it meaningless waste. A difference of opinion. Which doesn't change the way we live. If I don't like it, I can move to Bangladesh or Sudan." Id. at 12.).
Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes: Stories, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1994).
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Worlds: A Novel, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum & Jay Rubin (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1993).
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2000).
Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (London: Vintage Books, 1992, 1998).
Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2002) ("Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?" Id. at 179.).
Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum & Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2001) ("Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think--by following language and a logic that appears consistent--you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge." "The sad fact is that language and logic cut off from reality have a far greater power than the language and logic of reality--with all that extraneous matter weighing down like a rock on any at ion we take." Id. at 363.).
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2009) ("The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school." Id. at 45. "As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. That's one of the few good points of growing older." Id. at 86. "In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain." Id. at 140. "No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside." Id. at 163.).
Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2002) ("'Mediocrity walks a long, hard path,' says the man in the black suit." Id. at 341.).
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1998) ("The address --an office building in the wealthy Akasaka district--was the only thing on the card. There was no name. I turned it over to check the back, but it was blank. I brought the card to my nose, but it had no fragrance. It was just a normal white card. 'No name?' I said. She smiled for the first time and gently shook her head from side to side. 'I believe that what you need is money. Does money have a name?' I shook my head as she was doing. Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability." Id. at 355.).
