What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously - Haruki Murakami

• Dare to be different.
• Self pity is annoying to witness, frustrating to constantly have to counter, and moreover, you’re taking a back seat on your life and decisions.
• Correspondence is simply correspondence. Judging our lives by correspondence, however, stifles the range of emotions you can feel.
• Life doesn’t require ideals. It requires standards of action
• Death is a part of life, and prematurely rationalizing death is an attempt to coerce a resolution which needs temporal and spatial understanding.
• You can observe, see, and truly experience, even when you don’t think you can.
• Be careful about what you say. People are sensitive, and they will get hurt.
• Don’t be a puppet to other people’s ideas of you.
• When you’re surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

• Never bottle up your emotions. You need release. Write, walk, meet people, draw, paint. Do something, but don’t bottle it up. There’s nothing worse than feeling you’re all alone.
• What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.
• Everything takes time and sustained effort. Human relationships cannot be built in a day.
• Give people a chance, even if you’re scared.
• Be open to love, regardless of whether you’ve been hurt before. The truth is, everyone’s been hurt before.
• You’re thinking about how it’s morning now or night and the next thing you know, you’re old.

• People are interconnected. Karma goes around:
• Don’t exhaust yourself trying to babysit anyone. Your life is bigger than solving everyone else’s problems. It’s important to find balance and do your own thing (Murakami, for example, is fit, and loves to run, even in his 60s).
• Eat. Eat well, and eat nutritiously. It’s important, and it will keep you happy.
• If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking

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I had met a lot of weird people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years.

“That’s the only kind of book I can trust,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature,” he added, “but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.”

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Reasons to read it:

• "Norwegian Wood" delves into the complexities of human emotions, particularly love, loss, and loneliness. The book offers a nuanced portrayal of characters grappling with their feelings and navigating the challenges of relationships.
• Haruki Murakami's writing style is often praised for its poetic beauty and evocative imagery. "Norwegian Wood" showcases his ability to create vivid atmospheres and capture the essence of emotions, immersing readers in the story.
• The novel explores the themes of coming-of-age and self-discovery. It follows the protagonist's journey through the transformative experiences of youth, reflecting the universal struggles and uncertainties of growing up.

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Reasons to skip it:

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