I’ve started reading again. A while ago I bought a coupon for Indigo/Chapters at a discount from Kijiji‘s daily deals. I didn’t know what I wanted to buy, but decided to get two books; Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, also by Murakami.

I already finished the book this break and I really enjoyed it. It’s essentially a memoir of Murakami preparing for the New York City Marathon back in 2007. It’s interesting to hear about how he started running, why he kept it up and how it relates to his writing career as well.

-steven

Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk

A girl calls and asks, “Does it hurt very much to die?” Well, sweetheart, I tell her, yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living. – 237

Looking good is not part of the big plan. My plan is to look like untapped potential. The look I’m going for is natural. Real. The look I’m after is, raw material. Not desperate and needy, but ripe with potential. Not hungry. Sure, I want to look like I’m worth the effort. Washed but not ironed. Clean but not polished. Confident but humble.
Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn’t shine and glitter. – 220-219

You can tell people the truth, but they’ll never believe you until the event. Until it’s too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. – 177

The same as if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, you realize, if no one had been there to witness the agony of Christ, would we be saved? The key to salvation is how much attention you get. – 152

You realize that people take drugs because it’s the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It’s only in drugs or death we’ll see anything new, and death is just too controlling. – 151

According to Fertility Hollis there is no chaos. There are only patterns…If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. – 119-118

The cultures that don’t castrate you to make you a slave, they castrate your mind. They make sex so filthy and evil and dangerous that no matter how good you know it would feel to have sexual relations, you won’t. – 38

After Dark – Haruki Murakami

Is action merely the incidental product of though, or is thought the consequential product of action? – 188

That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. – 206

That’s all for now

-steven