# Quote — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

> “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

- Author: [Haruki Murakami](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami.md)
- Book: [Kafka on the Shore](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/lost-opportunities-lost

## More from this book

> It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/its-all-a-question.md)

> Where does your responsibility begin here? Wiping away the nebula from your sight, you struggle to find where you really are. You're trying to find the direction of the flow, struggling to hold on to the axis of time. But you can't locate the borderline separating dream and reality. Or even the boundary between what's real and what's possible. All you're sure of is that you're in a delicate position. Delicate-and dangerous. You're pulled along, a part of it, unable to pin down the principles of prophecy, or of logic. Like when a river overflows, washing over a town, all road signs have sunk beneath the waves. And all you can see are the anonymous roofs of the sunken houses.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/where-does-your.md)

> And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/haruki-murakami/kafka-on-the-shore/and-you-really.md)