People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneli… - Ryū Murakami

“I really did suffer a lot,” she said, “and for a lot longer than I even care to remember. I was sure I’d never find anything to take the place of ballet, and it took all my energy just to get through each day. My parents and my friends all said that time alone would heal the wound, and I guess I knew it was true, but I wished I could hibernate or something, and let time go by without having to suffer through it. But of course the clock just kept slowly ticking away. Tick, tick, tick- like it was chipping away at at me, at my life.“

One of the photographs in the magazine caught his eye. A homeless youth in New York City. It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.

In the old days, things like tropical fish or imported wineglasses weren’t within reach for the average person. Now when you walked down the street you passed shop windows full of the finest quality goods from around the world. Any of these things could be yours if you were willing to sacrifice a little, and many people ended up sacrificing a lot. It’s difficult to control the desire to accumulate things.