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Quote by Haruki Murakami

“Reiko set the ball on the ground and patted my knee. "Look," she said, "I'm not telling you to stop sleeping with girls. If you're O.K. with that, then it's OK. It's your life after all, it's something you have to decide. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't use yourself up in some unnatural form. Do you see what I'm getting at? It would be such a waste. The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older. It's true. So think carefully. If you want to take care of Naoko, take care of yourself too." I said I would think about it.”

Quote by Haruki Murakami

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Norwegian Wood

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Haruki Murakami

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“Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood. If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent human being in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all of the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.”

“Hardly had Juana had time to get settled when there was a clatter in the courtyard. The night sprang into excitement; instructions were shouted, torches brought. And suddenly the doors burst open; suddenly Philip -- hot, handsome, disheveled -- strode in. Philip was blond and sturdy; the gunpowder-train of Juana's emotions, long and dark and twisting, exploded at last. Philip's eyes must have seen, if nothing else, a girl in virginal flush, a young body of sixteen. He could hardly endure the formal presentations of the nobles. As soon as they were ended, he did what is generally referred to as commanding the nearest cleric to marry them on the spot. This person, however -- the Spaniard don Diego Villaescusa, Dean of Jaen -- it was not in Philip's power to order about. But the fact that it must have been Juana who gave the command only serves to underline the mutuality of their haste and hunger. The Dean did as he was bidden; the ignited youngsters kneeled; Philip hurried Juana out. In a room on the rez de chaussee overlooking the turbulent river they tore off their clothes. Someone had managed to get a gilded crucifix nailed on the ceiling above the bed -- surely one of the unnoticed ornaments (and, as things turned out, one of the most inappropriate) ever put up.”