I was in the basement retrieving some art materials (acrylic paint tubes, brushes and stuff) and plucked out a few past issues of my Flow magazines from the bookshelf there. Then I found this mini notebook (roughly A7-size).

An idea came to me to use my Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter to type out my favorite soul-searching Murakami quotes […]

Chapter 1, Page 1: Once the plane was on the ground, soft music began to flow from the ceiling speakers: a sweet orchestral cover version of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood". The melody never failed to send a shudder through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever.

Frankly, I do not know how to write the review of this book. I loved it very much. It is a straight, simple story, yet its simplicity is beautiful and moving. I did not expect myself to shed tears but cry I did. This is the story of Toru Watanabe set in his student days in Tokyo in the late 1960s.

This happens to me quite a lot: “I can never say what I want to say,” continued Naoko. “It’s been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words—the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can't catch her.”

Page 206: That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami tells the story of what happens to a few particular persons between 11.56 P.M. and 6.52 A.M. in Tokyo on a particular night.