With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. ”― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you

Kino enjoyed listening to whatever music he liked and reading books he'd been wanting to read. Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.

I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.

It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short. (...) If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.

… 靠著閱讀堆積如山的無聊不良小說，而深深學到，什麼是無聊不良小說。

Ist einem das Lesen einmal zur Gewohnheit geworden - meist eignet man sich diese bereits in jungen Jahren an -, kann man sie nicht so leicht wieder ablegen und wird trotz YouTube und 3-D-Filmen, wenn man Zeit hat (oder auch wenn man keine hat), immer wieder aus freien Stücken ein Buch zur Hand nehmen. Und solange es Menschen gibt, seien es zwanzig oder sei es nur einer, mache ich mir keine ernsthaften Sorgen um die Zukunft der Literatur.

Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.