Tag Archives: Haruki Murakami

Great opening paragraph…61

Leave a reply

haruki murakami - dance dance dance 10-6-13“I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.

In these dreams, I’m there, implicated in some kind of ongoing circumstance. All indications are that I belong to this dream continuity.

The Dolphin Hotel is distorted, much too narrow. It seems more like a long, covered bridge. A bridge stretching endlessly through time. And there I am, in the middle of it. Someone else is there too, crying.

The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I am part of the hotel.”
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami [translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum]

Great opening paragraph… 53

7 Replies

haruki murakami - hard-boiled wonderland and the End of the World 10-6-13“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the glove. How would I know?”

‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami [translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum]

Great opening paragraph… 40

2 Replies

haruki murakami - norwegian wood 10-6-13“I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth, lending everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a squat airport building, a BMW billboard. So – Germany again.”

‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami [translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin]