This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain, and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. It - or they - are real moons.

theevildead-:
“The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands.
Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl.
A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. “
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
(Source: murakamistuff, via neutroon)
You said you’re going far away. How far away are we talking about?”
“It’s a distance that can’t be measured.”
“Like the distance that separates one person’s heart from another’s.
I decided to write the stories about Aomame and Tengo alternately, or like major and minor keys following the format of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.” But before doing so, I needed to come up with names [for the characters]. At some point I suddenly thought Aomame would be a good name. I hit upon the idea through association with an aomame tofu dish I saw on the menu of an izakaya restaurant. At the same time, the name Tengo sprung to mind. At that point, I knew the novel was almost done. During the two years I spent writing the work, my conviction that I would eventually complete it never wavered.
har
murakamistuff:
“I’m not going to think of anything superfluous, Ushikawa decided. Be thick-skinned, have a hard shell around my heart, take one day, go by the book. I’m just a machine. A capable, patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist.”
— Haruki Murakami - 1Q84
Ushikawa … “instrumentalized” by rrrenaldo
(via veronicaecholls)

murakamistuff:
Philip Gabriel’s notes on a page of the original Japanese version of 1Q84.
(Source: rvbbit)