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Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.

Haruki Murakami

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Haruki Murakami
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 12
Athletics Competitor
Essayist
Linguist
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Kyōto
Murakami Haruki
Littles
Strange
Spinning
Sputnik
Little
Name
Metal
Satellite
Mean
Wonder
Metals
Lump
Long
Names
Coincidence
Satellites
Kind
Poor
Russian
Lumps
Think
Means
Companion
Travelling
Thinking
Around
Looked
Russians
Earth
Gave
Dictionary

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If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.
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In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion.
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Colours shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.
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Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.
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If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset.
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Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren't.
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I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.
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Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.
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That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.
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If she did experience sex-or something close to it-in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.
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Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us.
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I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.
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Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life
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