Sputnik Sweetheart - 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."

"Miu smiled. A nostalgic, intimate smile, like a treasured old possession pulled out of the back of a drawer."

"A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magicla baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."

"Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let in the sunlight to wake someone very special to you."

"I hadn't planned on being a teacher, but after I actually became one I discovered a deeper respect and affection for theprofession than I ever imagined I'd have. More accurately, really, I should say that I happened to discover myself."

"'I hardly recognize you these days,' I said.
'It's that season,' she said disinterestedly, sipping at her drink through a straw.
'What season?' I asked.
'A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone else's."

"I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so - I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going.'
'Like a little lost Sputnik?'"

"Strange thing is, when I'm not with Miu I don't feel like going anywhere."

"Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good."

"Do you know what 'Sputnik' means in Russian? 'Travelling companion.'"

"What happened after I first met Miu was I stopped thinking."

"Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings."

"Ever since I was little I've enjoyed making my own private rules and living by them. I was very independant, super-serious type of girl. I was born in Japan, went to Japanese schools, grew up playing with Japanese friends. Emotionally I was completely Japanese, but by nationality I was a foreigner, Technically speaking Japan will always be a foreign country. My parents weren't the kind to be strict about things, but that's one thing they drummed into my head since I can remember: You are a foreigner here. I decided that in order for me to survive I needed to make myself stronger."

"Sumire went over to the other side. That would explain a lot. Sumire broke through the mirror and journeyed to the other side. To meet the other Miu who was there. If the Miu on this side rejected her, wouldn't that be the logical thing to do?"

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

"Miu was like an empty room after everyone's left."

Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami