“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”
― Franny and Zooey

“I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.”
― Raise High the Roof Beam

Haruki Murakami (Japanese author)
___________
Born : January 12, 1949
___________
Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and translator whose deeply imaginative and often ambiguous books became international best sellers.

Murakami’s first novel Hear the Wind Sing won a prize for best fiction by a new writer. From the start his writing was characterized by images and events that the author himself found difficult to explain but which seemed to come from the inner recesses of his memory. Some argued that this ambiguity, far from being off-putting, was one reason for his popularity with readers, especially young ones, who were bored with the self-confessions that formed the mainstream of contemporary Japanese literature. His perceived lack of a political or intellectual stance irritated “serious” authors, who dismissed his early writings as being no more than entertainment.

“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, 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.”
― Kafka on the Shore

“I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.”
―South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Norwegian Wood

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
― Norwegian Wood

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”
― Norwegian Wood

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Donna Tart
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Born : December 23, 1963
_________
American novelist especially noted for her debut novel, The Secret History (1992), and her third book, The Goldfinch (2013), winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Eleven years after the publication of The Little Friend, The Goldfinch appeared. The title refers to an exquisite 1654 painting—not much bigger than a standard sheet of paper—by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius (1622–54) that serves as the plot device that drives the story. Many readers found the work to be a significant addition to the literature of trauma and memory and a highly engaging meditation on the power of art. In 2014 the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― The Secret History

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
― The Goldfinch

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― The Secret History

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― The Secret History