Wednesday, October 13, 2010

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

"But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there's a darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you." [133]


"I'm not a human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead. I repeat this like a mantra. A literal, mechanical repetition. And I try hard to reduce the perceptible world to the narrowest parameters. All I can see is the ground three yards ahead, nothing beyond. My whole world consists of the ground three yards ahead. No need to think beyond that. The sky and wind, the grass, the cows munching the grass, the spectators, cheers, lake, novels, reality, the past, memory -- these mean nothing to me. Just getting me past the next three yards -- this was my tiny reason for living as a human. No, I'm sorry -- as a machine." [111]


"Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn't applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work." [71]


"In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance." [19]



What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008)
Haruki Murakami

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