- The joy of reading lies in the fact that it is a vast world that makes you aware of your insignificance, and that many things are not worth worrying about in the long river of history or from the perspective of all humanity. It allows us to become a little smarter.
- I can almost effortlessly imagine what her hometown looks like: noisy and narrow streets, crowded with tricycles, motorcycles, and cars. The storefronts on the street are printed with colorful large fonts and celebrity portraits. The loudspeakers of tape recorders play cheap product promotion advertisements, floating in the air like flying dust - this is the appearance of a small town that started in the 1980s. But beneath this vulgar and noisy appearance, there are also some new elements of the times: in the Xinhua Bookstore filled with teaching materials, you can buy works of various European and American literature. In the school library, there are also the latest urban literature novels, and Murakami's books are among them, writing about a distant new world: the rock music of beach boys, Vans jackets, and the frankness of adolescence...
- Usually, I go to his office to talk about products, but as we talk, he will say that he has discovered some particularly good songs recently and asks if we can listen together. As a result, we end up listening for the whole afternoon. He smokes cigars in his office, and we follow suit, inhaling the smog. Several men listen to music in silence, creating a strange scene.
- Haruki Murakami lives a disciplined life like a monk. He usually wakes up at 4 o'clock in the morning and works for 5 to 6 hours. In the afternoon, he runs 10 kilometers or swims 1.5 kilometers (or both), then reads for a while and listens to music. He goes to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening. Every day at noon, he takes a nap on the sofa, and after about half an hour of rest, he naturally wakes up. For 30 years, he has trained his body to be a very precise "clock." "I repeat this routine every day without changing it. This repetition itself becomes important, like a form of hypnosis. I am immersed in myself and enter a deeper level of consciousness. However, to maintain this repetitive life for a long time - six months to a year - requires strong willpower and physical strength. In this sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Both physical strength and artistic sensitivity are equally important." He said this in an interview with a reporter from "Paris Review."
- As Neil Postman, the author of the classic media critique "Amusing Ourselves to Death," said, images require visual impact and more pictures. Or, in other words, the natural attribute of television as a medium makes it difficult to provide complete rational thinking and can only offer fragmented and sensory-intensive narratives.
- Due to well-known reasons, people in the past only knew that China and North Korea were closely connected, sharing weal and woe, and cultivating a friendship that was solidified with blood during the war. However, they did not understand that there were also significant contradictions and differences between the top leaders of China and North Korea, and that these contradictions and differences, as well as their resolution methods, were closely related to the Cold War situation in Asia.
- The central idea of science is to find the indispensable balance point between two seemingly contradictory views, to accept new ways of thinking, no matter how strange or counterintuitive they may be, and then ruthlessly doubt and examine all ideas, regardless of their novelty or age. This is the method of finding truth in absurdity.
- The proposition put forward by Wright is that the human gut microbiota not only aids in digestion but also functions as an independent organ, which may cause diarrhea or even psychological or mental illnesses.
- Moments of envy and scheming to make others envious have become commonplace in social circles, making the invoice circle and ticket-watching circle increasingly boring.
- It is unlikely for an ordinary person to become Churchill, but if you have curiosity about the relationship between humans and nature, the thoughts that once occurred in Darwin's brain may also occur in yours, and this process is particularly fascinating.
- If you fight with a dragon for too long, you will become a dragon yourself; if you stare into the abyss for too long, the abyss will stare back at you.
- Spending five years staring at a computer screen, studying some of the strangest and darkest thoughts of humanity, may not make most people feel like it was a wonderful time, but I found that these honest data unexpectedly bring comfort. In terms of insecurity, anxiety, struggle, and desire, I have never felt so lonely.
- The greatness of technology has two directions: one is continuous innovation, leading human civilization forward, which is the gene of Silicon Valley in the United States; the other is to mature, lower the cost, and popularize leading technology, thereby changing the lives of every individual, which is the gene of the Chinese Internet.
- Abandoning cars will save people money. Cai Si said that in Europe, the average cost of owning a car is about 6,000 euros per year. If you think that private cars will continue to exist as a symbol of status, don't forget that horses were once a symbol of status.