One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.

A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.

Animals that not only move by their own free will and share feelings with people but also possess sight and hearing qualify as deserving of names.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.

We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness.

It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.

I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.

It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage.

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.

Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.

You said that the mind is like the wind but perhaps it is we who are like the wind Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying.

But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it's right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that's how I became the person I am now.

Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.

Of course you keep telling yourself there's something to be learned from everything, and growing old shouldn't be that hard. That's the general drift.

I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes.

We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.

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.

What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me.

I think I'll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what's going to happen. I can still die after that - it won't be too late. Probably.

she was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out.

Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.

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.

And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.

We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.

Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.

Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait.

All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur...bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first.

You could be anybody when you're writing. That's the reason that I'm writing: to be anybody. You can put your feet in various shoes and experience anything.

Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart.

When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

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.

What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.

To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me.

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