# Quote — Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

> Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.

- Author: [Haruki Murakami](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami.md)
- Book: [1Q84](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/1q84.md)
- Page: 222
- 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/of-course-reading

## 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)