Nights when it was impossible for me to sleep, the images of Naoko would come back to me. There was no way I could stop them. Too many memories of her were crammed inside me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood […] The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place—[…] Naoko spoke to me in the spaces between the crashing of the dark waves. Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on the beach alone. Powerless, I could go nowhere; sorrow itself would envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like perspiration.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (Vintage, 2003)
