No One Writes Back

Life is bearable when you have someone to write to, and someone who writes you back.

It feels as though the beginning and the end are intertwined, thus leading to a never-ending cycle. Surely this will not be the end. Just as it can't be considered the beginning. Just as it can't be determined where the beginning or the end is.

The past is always consecrated for the present, and the present is always sacrificed for the future.

I was never alone, not before my journey, not during my journey, and not after my journey.

Everyone makes mistakes. The problem is when they repeat the same mistake over and over again.

Desire has a wicked habit of not knowing its place, and trying to go beyond that.

Wajo looks at me without the slightest sign of hatred or resentment in his eyes. I feel terrible. His eyes seem to say that dogs do not know what hatred or resentment is.

Reading over a letter you wrote the night before is an act of denying yourself. When you read it over, you’re bound to find at least one or two sentences you want to erase, like a mistake you made in the past. I don’t think you need to be ashamed of them, since they’re symptoms that occurred because you were too true to your feelings, or because you were full of courage. If we don’t allow ourselves to have courage at night, at least, we’ll have to live as cowards all our lives.

The good thing, though, is that there’s only one way to overcome despair. So we don’t have go through the painful process of choosing. That one way is to grit your teeth and go on living without dying.

The power of habit is great.

The discord arises from the fact that we require different amounts of time to accept each other.

In that moment, I felt, for the first time, that nothing brings so much joy in life as being approved of by someone.

Hope that's alive and moving can keep a person going until he falls into despair.

It's always sad to say goodbye to a habit. Especially if it's contributed to the peace in your heart and in your daily life. Just as my journey has. Now I must get into a different kind of habit, and find myself in a different kind of life. For genuine peace and stability of mind.

Even a festival of madness is bound to end at one point. Only loneliness and emptiness remain after a riotous festival. When it's over, the taboos that were lifted like magic will return like magic. I can hear the hour of taboos approaching step by step from far away. A lunatic, unable to deal with the aftermath of the festival, may send down a punishment of taboos. A night of madness may drive someone to madness.

People think it's strange when you're alone in doing something that's usually done by two people. Watching a movie or eating, for instance, Like there's a rule that such things should be done by two or more people.

I often care what people think, too. But in the end, everyone is alone in the world. Everyone is alone, but not everyone thinks so.

In this world, lies go over better than the truth more often than not. Lies set your mind at unease, but your body at ease.

What I've learned on my journey is that the fewer destinations you have, the better. When there's no goal, there's no expectation, and when there's no expectation, there's no disappointment. Freedom is being able to go off when you feel like it.

Three years ago, my journey began with me stepping through that gate, and now, it comes to an end with me stepping through it again. Why does it feel as if the boundaries of the beginning and the end are so far apart, when in fact, they’re much too close together. The sense of distance probably comes from the human habit of separating and classifying and distinguishing, which sets the human heart at ease.

Even a person with ninety-nine rooms sleeps in only one room. And even in that room, the maximum space he requires is only as big as his own body. The size of a coffin. A big room only makes you greedy. Because you keep making frantic efforts to fill it up with this and that. Death? When your room is small, you become familiar with death, and are no longer afraid of it.

A habit is something more mysterious and confounding than affection. Affection is a conscious thing, but habits are subconscious. I thought at the time that perhaps what’s real is dominated by the subconscious.

I know an unhappy person who can’t write anything unless he’s sitting at his desk in his room with his laptop. [...] No matter what spectacular places he visited, he couldn’t enjoy himself because he had only his own room in mind. He was the happiest when he was sitting at his desk in his room, traveling with his laptop. In the end, he became someone who couldn’t come out of his room all his life. He did write, of course, but he couldn’t be a world-renowned novelist. He could write things that were only as big as the room in which he stayed.

Writers by nature like to observe, pry, and meddle.

The easiest way to confirm the truth is to put it through the litmus test of deceit.

I say from time to time, if you want to know about someone else’s desires, you should have them pack a suitcase. Or take a peek into their suitcase. Someone who packs his bag with all kinds of stuff ends up suffering from just that much fatigue and stress, even while traveling. The weight of the bag alone will guarantee that. The trip, intended as a way to unburden yourself, suddenly becomes a burden in itself. People who care about what other people think of them, like my sister, can never go on a trip.

I don’t like travel books that are half full of photographs. Sometimes, you can’t tell whether the book was written for travel, or the travel was undertaken for the book. What I dislike even more are people who like to show off their travels. You can’t tell whether they travel for themselves, or to show other people. People who show off their travels do so because really, they don’t have anything.

For you and for others, life begins in joy, but ends in sorrow.

It's a very dangerous idea to like someone on the whole just because you like a part of her.

There must be a very thick darkness, unfathomable to me, beyond those eyes. A universe where no star or moon rises despite its darkness. Now that I think about it, I've never given his darkness a serious thought, or made a genuine effort to understand darkness from his stance. But with those black eyes, he looks at my wet eyes in turn one after the other, as though he can see. Those eyes can't see, but they can talk. The eyes can't see, but I'm in those eyes for sure, alive and breathing. He sees me, and knows his universe. I'm sure that a moon rises, and stars fall, in that universe.