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"Maybe the midwife had arrived. The woman was efficient, no-nonsense. A different kind of mind lay inside a person who was accustomed to seeing blood without injury and to thrusting her hands into that most private and miraculous moment."
Excerpts from The Bluest Eye
“Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter---like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre.”
“The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet---green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the insides of an uncooked egg. Stubbornly clinging to its own mass, refusing to break up and be removed. How, I wonder, can it be so neat and nasty at the same time?”
“Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of guilty and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal in my black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them off, for it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction.”
“When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm, my mother frowns.”
“But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain. Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it---taste it---sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base---everywhere in that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted windowpanes. It coated my chest, along with the salve, and when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.”
“She slept in the bed with us. Frieda on the outside because she is brave---it never occurs to her that if in her sleep her hand hangs over the edge of the bed ‘something’ will crawl out from under it and bite her fingers off. I sleep near the wall because that thought has occurred to me. Pecola, therefore, had to sleep in the middle.”
Olga was blond and wore tight jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She looked to be in her late twenties. She stood about five foot seven and had a full face with a rosy complexion. She looked like a girl born to a well-off farming family, raised with a gaggle of garrulous geese. Her hair was pulled back, and a black enamel bag dangled from her shoulder. She had a good posture, like a courier with an important package to deliver, and took long strides as she walked into the hotel.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The quiet, melancholy music gradually gave shape to the undefined sadness enveloping his heart, as if countless microscopic bits of pollen adhered to an invisible being concealed in the air, ultimately revealing, slowly and silently, its shape.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The sky was covered with a thin layer of clouds, not a patch of blue visible anywhere, though it did not look like rain. There was no wind, either. The branches of a nearby willow tree were laden with lush foliage and dropping heavily, almost to the ground, though they were still, as if lost in deep thought. Occasionally a small bird landed unsteadily on a branch, but soon gave up and fluttered away. Like a distraught mind, the branch quivered slightly, then returned to stillness.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The firmly-chiseled mouth and chin contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in the deep set eyes. The variance is suggestive of an almost complete separation of passion and intellect, as though thought an emotion were each isolated in it's own sphere through some violence of will-power.
Oscar Wilde
Tsukuru must have fallen asleep again, but he woke up once more in a dream. Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where---at a special time and place---imagination had been set free.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
In Haida’s brain there must have been a kind of high speed circuit built to match the pace of his thoughts, requiring him to occasionally engage his gears, to let his mind race for fixed periods of time. If he didn’t—if he kept on running in low gear to keep pace with Tsukuru’s reduced speed—Haida’s mental infrastructure would overheat and start to malfunction. Or at least, Tsukuru got that impression. After a while Haida would debark from this circuit and, as if nothing had happened, smile calmly and return to the place where Tsukuru lay waiting. He’d slow down, and keep pace with Tsukuru’s mind.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
