# Quote — Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

> “Feelings like that don’t give you any choice, do they?” Aomame said. “They come at you whenever they want to. It’s not like choosing food from a menu.”
>
> “It is in one way: you have regrets after you make a mistake.”
>
> They shared a laugh.
>
> Aomame said, “It’s the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we’re choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everything’s decided in advance and we pretend we’re making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.”
>
> “If that’s true, life is pretty dark.”
>
> “Maybe so.”
>
> “But if you can love someone with your whole heart—even if he’s a terrible person and even if he doesn’t love you back—life is not a hell, at least, though it might be kind of dark. Is that what you’re saying?” Ayumi asked.
>
> “Exactly.”
>
> “But still,” Ayumi said, “it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.”
>
> “You may be right,” Aomame said. “But it’s too late to traded in for another one.”
>
> “The exchange window expired a long time ago,” Ayumi said.
>
> “And the receipt’s been thrown away.”
>
> “You said it.”
>
> “Oh, well, no problem,” Aomame said. “The world’s going to end before we know it.”

- Author: [Haruki Murakami](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami.md)
- Book: [1Q84](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84.md)
- Page: 241
- 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/feelings-like-that

## 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)