Haruki Murakami: The Elephant Vanishes

Alone now, I leaned over the edge of my boat and looked down to the bottom of the sea. The volcano was gone. The water´s calm surface reflected the blue of the sky. Little waves-like silk pajamas fluttering in a breeze-lapped against the side of the boat. There was nothing else.
I stretched out in the bottom of the boat and closed my eyes, waiting for the rising tide to carry me where I belonged.
The Second Bakery Attack

Okay, let´s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it´s all right if I don´t sleep with you. What I´m saying is, I´d like to be as fair as possible. I don´t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I´d want anything forced on me. It´s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.
The Kangaroo Communiqué

I wander through China. Without ever having boarded a plane. My travels take place here in Tokyo subways, in the backseat of a taxi. My adventures take me to the waiting room of the nearby dentist, to the bank teller´s window. I can go everywhere and I don´t go anywhere.
Tokyo-one day, as I ride the Yamanote Loop, all of a suden this city will start to go. In a flash, the buildings will crumble. And I´ll be holding my ticket, watching it all. Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leaching into everything it touches. Slowly, gradually, until nothing remains. No, this isn´t a place for me. That is how we will lose our speech, how our dreams will turn to mist. The way our adolescence, so tedious we worried it would last forever, evaporated.
Misdiagnosis, as a psychiatrist might say, as it was with that Chinese girl. Maybe, in the end, our hopes were the wrong way around. But what am I, what are you, if not a misdiagnosis? And if so, is there a way out?
Even so, I have packed into a trunk my faithful little outfielder´s pride. I sit on the stone steps by the harbor, and I wait for that slow boat to China. It is due to appear on the blank horizon. I am thinking about China, the shining roofs, the verdant fields.
Let loss and destruction come my way. There are nothing to me. I am not afraid. Any more than the clean-up batter fears the inside fastball, any more than the committed revolutionary fears the garrote. If only, if only...
Oh friends, my friends, China is so far away.
A Slow Boat to China

"People like Aoki don´t scare me. The´re all over the place, but I don´t trouble myself with them anymore.When I run into them, I don´t get involved. I see them coming and I head the other way. I can spot them in an instant. But at the same time, I´ve got to admire the Aokis of this world. Their ability to lay low until the right moment, their knack for latching on to opportunities, their skill in fucking with people´s minds - that´s no ordinary talent. I hate their kind so much it makes me want to puke, but it is a talent (....................)
They´re real monsters. They´re the ones I have nightmares about. In those dreams, there´s only the silence. And these faceless people. Their silence seeps into everything like ice water. And then it all goes murky. And I´m dissolving and I´m screaming, but no one hears".
The Silence