“Painted this fake book cover of Norwegian Wood by Murakami for my friend who is far off in Japan” - Sean Lewis

Tony Takitani (2004) dir. Jun Ichikawa

"They went on a few dates after that. They didn’t go anywhere in particular, just found quiet places to sit and talk for hours; about their pasts, about their work, about the way they thought or felt about this or that. They never seemed to tire of talking. It was as if they were filling up each other’s emptiness."

Tony Takitani (2002) by Haruki Murakami

"She wore her clothes with such naturalness and grace that she could have been a bird that had enveloped itself in a special wind as it prepared to fly off to another world. He had never seen a woman wear her clothes with such apparent joy."

Tony Takitani (2002) by. Haruki Murakami

"Shozaburo assumed that he would die in prison. But the prospect of death did not frighten him greatly… I’ve lived the way I wanted to all these years, he thought… As he waited, Shozaburo watched the clouds drift by the bars of his tiny window, and painted mental pictures on his cell’s filthy walls of the faces and bodies of the women he had slept with. In the end, though, he turned out to be one of only two Japanese prisoners to leave the prison alive and go home to Japan. By that time, the other man, a high-ranking officer, had nearly lost his mind. Shozaburo stood on the deck of the boat, and as he watched the avenues of Shanghai shrinking away in the distance he thought, Life: I’ll never understand it."

Tony Takitani (2002) by Haruki Murakami

"Beethoven, he learned, was a proud man who believed absolutely in his own abilities and never bothered to flatter the nobility. Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world, he thought political power and wealth served only one purpose: to make art possible."

Kafka on the Shore (2002) by Haruki Murakami

"I get out of bed, go over to the window, and look at the night sky. And think about time that can never be regained. I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me."

Kafka on the Shore (2002) by Haruki Murakami

"Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
I turned faceup on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-colored sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep."

Sputnik Sweetheart (1999, 2001) by Haruki Murakami

Just finished this novel a few days ago

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Sputnick Sweetheart (1999, 2001) by Haruki Murakami

“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains -flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and all, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions.”