Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some omnius dance with death just before dawn. Why?

Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you.

Something inside of you . So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closes your eyes and plugging up your ears. So the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there , no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind od sandstorm you need to imagine.

(...) And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain when you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

- Haraki Murakami

Haraki Murakami: 1949, Japan, schrijver; beschrijft het hele spectrum van de menselijke ervaring.

Boeken: After Dark, Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood,  Dance Dance Dance, Sputnik Sweetheart. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Quotes: to be a human being:

Life is not like water.  Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.

- Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

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No matter what they wish for,

No matter how far they go,

Peoplevcan never be anything but themselves. 

That's all.

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So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

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As time goes on, you'll understand, what lasts, lasts: 

What doesn't doesn't.

Time solves most things and what time can't solve,

You have to solve yourself.

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In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know 

Are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

Memories warm you up from the inside.

But they also tear you apart.

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Memories and thoughts age, just as people do.

But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.

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But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.

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Lost opportunities,

Lost possibilities,

Feelings we can never get back again.

That's part of what it means to be alive.

If I have left a wound inside you,

It is not just your wound but mine as well.

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I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

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Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by.

The past increases, the future recedes.

Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

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What happens when people open their hearts?

They get better.

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Pain is inevitable.

Suffering is optional.

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I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself any more.

It's hard to put it into words, but I guess it's as if I was fast asleep

And someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back

Together again.

That sort of feeling.

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Every one of us is losing something precious to us -

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can

Never get back again.

That's part of  what it means to be alive.

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 I'm just sad you were so nice to me

When I was having my problems,

But now that you're have yours,

It seems there's not a thing I can do for you.

You're locked up in that little world of yours,

And when I try knocking on the door, you just

Sort of look up for a second and go right

Back inside.

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 When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it.

I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone.

Not that I really felt lonely.

I thought that's just the way things are.

Beyond the edge of the world there's a space

where emptiness and substance neatly overlap,

Where past and future form a continuous, endless loop.

And, hovering about, thereare signs n one has ever read,

words no one has ever heard.

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Still, you have to go there-

To the the edge of the world.

There's something you can't do unless you get there.

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But even if you go to the ends of the earth,

You won't be able to escape it.

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What we seek is some kind of compensation

For what we put up with.

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I don't know, feel like this is n't the real world.

The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me.

A certain type of perfection

Can only be reallized through a limitless accumulation

Of the imperfect.

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You might think you made a new world

Or a new self.

But your old self is always gonna be there,

Just below the surface.

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Two people can sleep in the same bed and still

Be alone when they  close their eyes.

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When I first met you,

I felt a kind of contradiction in you.

You're seeking something,

But at the same time,

You are running away.

For all you're worth.

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It's like Tolstoy said.

Happiness is an allegory,

Unhappiness a story.

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Even in the smallest events

There's no such thing as confidence.

----

Death is not the opposite of life,

But a part of it.

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Everything passes.

Nobody gets anything for keeps.

And that's how we've got to live.

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Time weighs on you like an old, ambigous dream.

You keep on moving, trying to slip through it.

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I might think I can't take it any more,

That I can't go on any more,

But one way or another.

I get past that.

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I am nothing.

I'm like some - one who's been thrown into 

The ocean at night, floating all alone.

I reach out, but no one is there.

I call out, but no one answers.

I have no connection to anything.

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But what seems like a reasonable distance

To one person might feel too far to

Somebody else.

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I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life.

People may try to stop me, and convince me

I'm  wrong, bit I won't change.

I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. 

No matter who I was dealing with.

I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person's attitude so that they

Wouldn't get any closer.

I didn't easily swallow what other people told me.

My only passions were books and music.

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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 lonelin ess?

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I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells.

Nobody knows what's at the bottom.

All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to

The surfaces every once in a while.

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Our heart is not connected to another through harmony alone.

They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds.

Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility.

There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgivenness

Without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss.

That is what lies at the root of harmony.

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I have in my own hearr a world that's  deep, dark and rich.

And you, in your heart, have a world that is so deep, dark and rich.

So in that sense, even if I'm living in New York, Tokyo or Reykjavik,

It means that we each hold inside ourselves something that is the same nature and quality

To a much deeper place, we will discover that we live in a common world.

Chance encounters are what keep us going.

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Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum where no one ever comes,

And I'm watching over it for no one but myself.

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This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient.

Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything;

Don't get desparate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular

Thread before it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, 

One at a time.

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Have you ever had that feeling- that you'd like to go to a whole different place

And become a whole different self?

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Most people are not looking for provable truths.

As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain,

And almost no one is looking for painful truths.

What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make

Them feel as if their lives have some meaning.

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Is it possible, in the finalanalyses, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?

We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end,

How close can we come to that person' s essence?

We convince ourselves that we know the other person well,

But do we really know anything important abour anyone?

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Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence.

And that  thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person

From the inside.

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Now all you can do is wait.

It must be hard for you nut

There is a right time for everything,

Like the ebb and flow of tides.

No one can do anything to change them.

When it is time to wait, you must wait.