# Quote — Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

> A butterfly came fluttering along and landed on the shoulder of her blue work shirt. It was a small, white butterfly with a few crimson spots on its wings. The butterfly seemed to know no fear as it went to sleep on her shoulder.
>
> “I’m sure you’ve never seen this kind of butterfly,” the dowager said, glancing toward her own shoulder. Her voice betrayed a touch of pride. “Even down in Okinawa, you’d have trouble finding one of these. It gets its nourishment from only one type of flower – a special flower that only grows in the mountains of Okinawa. You have to bring the flower here and grow it first if you want to keep this butterfly in Tokyo. It’s a lot of trouble. Not to mention the expense.”
>
> “It seems to be very comfortable with you.”
>
> “This little person thinks of me as a friend.”
>
> “Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?”
>
> “It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally.”
>
> “Do you give them names?” Aomame asked, curious. “Like dogs or cats?”
>
> The dowager gave her head a little shake. “No, I don’t give them names, but I can tell one from another by their shapes and patterns. And besides, there wouldn’t be much point in giving them names: they die so quickly. These people are your nameless friends for just a little while. I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I’m sure it means they’ve died, but I can never find their bodies. They don’t leave any trace behind. It’s as if they’ve been absorbed by the air. They’re dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”

- Author: [Haruki Murakami](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami.md)
- Book: [1Q84](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84.md)
- Page: 101
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/1Q84#Book_1_(April-June)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/a-butterfly-came

## More from this book

> The pursuer’s blind spot is that he never thinks he’s being pursued.

p. 1025 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/the-pursuers-blind.md)

> So he always kept his mouth shut. He kept his ears open and listened closely to whatever anyone else had to say, aiming to learn something from everything he heard. This habit eventually became a useful tool. Through this, he discovered a number of important realities, including this one: most people in the world don’t really use their brains to think. And people who don’t think are the ones who don’t listen to others.

p. 868 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/so-he-always.md)

> Before he had realized it, these exercises had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.

p. 913 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84/before-he-had.md)