Tengo Quotes

#1. His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#2. I'm certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I'm not exactly a teacher. I write fiction, but I've never been published, so I'm not a writer yet, either." "You're nothing." Tengo nodded. "Exactly. For the moment, I'm nothing. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#3. Tengo stood by the window and looked at the scene outside. Beyond the garden and lawn was the dark line of the pine windbreak, through which came the sound of waves. The rough waves of the Pacific. It was thick, darkish sound, as if many souls were gathered, each whispering his story. They seemed to be seeking more souls to join them, seeking even more stories to be told. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#4. Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?" "When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out - that's the real world," Tengo replied. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#5. You don't get it" she said
'Don't get what?"
'We are one"
'We are one?" Tengo asked with a shock.
'We wrote the book together"
Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri's fingers against his palm.
...
'That's true. We wrote Air Crysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we'll be eaten together. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#6. He followed his daily routine, and she followed hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#7. Let me get someone to drive you home," I say before my fucked-up mind thinks of a million ways I could violate her tonight. I'm buzzed from alcohol and high, too. When I have sex with this girl, I want all my faculties.
She purses her lips and pouts like a kid. "No. I don't want to go home. Anywhere but home."
Oh, man.
I'm in trouble. Tengo un problema grande.
She looks up at me, her eyes in the moonlight sparking like rare, expensive jewels. "Colin thinks I want you, you know. He says our bickering is foreplay."
"Is it?" I ask, holding my breath to hear her response. Please, please let me remember the answer in the morning. #Quote by Simone Elkeles

#8. I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it," Tengo said ... "It was the one thing he was best at." "Hmm. I see," Kumi said. She pondered this. "But that might very well be the best way to live your life. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#9. Tengo ansia infinita de besarte la boca, de morderte los labios hasta hacerlos sangrar, de estrecharte en mis brazos con furores tan locos que más nunca en la vida me puedas olvidar."

"I have an infinite desire to kiss your lips, to bite your lips until it makes them bleed, to hold you in my arms with such a crazed frenzy that you will never forget me for the rest of your life."

#Quote by Eusebio Delfin

#10. As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students' heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world's riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#11. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can never escape the pressure of this water. This memory defines who you are, shapes your life, and is trying to send you to a place that has been decided for you. You can writhe all you want, but you will never be able to escape from this power
Tengo #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#12. Tengo did not know for certain whether he wanted to be a professional novelist, nor was he sure he had the talent to write fiction. What he did know was that he could not help spending a large part of every day writing fiction. To him, writing was like breathing. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#13. All he wanted from the girl was for her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace where the two of them could be alone. And he wanted her to tell him something - anything - about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that "something" might be. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#14. I'm a slow learner. When people are so talented or facile at picking up an instrument and playing covers, like Yo La Tengo, I admire that. But I could never do that. #Quote by Kim Gordon

#15. I hope I don't have an erection, Tengo thought. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#16. To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#17. Tengo gazed for a while at this scene outside. Things that are living and things that are not. Things that move and things that don't. What he saw out the window was the usual scenery. There was nothing new about it. The world has to move forward. Like a cheap alarm clock, it does a halfway decent job of fulfilling its assigned role. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#18. Mi Corazon. Mi alma. Son tuyos." My heart. My soul. They are yours, he whispered against the generous curve of her breast as a million sensations, all of them hot, all of them rich, all of them straddling the razor-sharp edge of pain, ripped through his loins like a flash fire and stripped him of everything but consciousness.
"Tuyo. Todo que tengo es tuyo." Yours. Everything I have is yours. #Quote by Cindy Gerard

#19. Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman. He did not welcome the unavoidable responsibility that came with dating a woman his own age, falling in love, and having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through which one had to pass, the hints regarding various possibilities, the unavoidable collisions of expectations: Tengo hoped to get by without taking on such burdens.
The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure most forms of deprivation. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#20. During the writers' strike in 2007, we put on our own SNL episode there with old sketches. Michael Cera hosted, our musical guest was Yo La Tengo, and we gave Lorne a birthday cake as he sat in the audience. #Quote by Amy Poehler

#21. Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut. Everybody was hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#22. I was reborn," she said, her hot breath brushing his ear.
"You were reborn," Tengo said.
"Because I died once."
"You died once," Tengo repeated.
"On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said.
"Why did you die?"
"So I would be reborn like this."
"You would be reborn," Tengo said.
"More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#23. She quietly stretched out a hand, and Tengo took it. The two of them stood there, side by side, as one, wordlessly watching the moon over the buildings. Until the newly risen sun shone upon it, robbing it of its nighttime brilliance. Until it was nothing more than a gray paper moon, hanging in the sky. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#24. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix - a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing ... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get ... #Quote by Hunter S. Thompson

#25. Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#26. What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as thought he were rewriting the past.It was the only way #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#27. As dangerous as Komatsu's plan might be, he could not possibly stop rewriting the novella at this point. He might have been able to give up on the idea before he started working on it, but that was out of the question now. He was up to his neck in it. He was breathing the air of its world, adapting to its gravity. The story's essence had permeated every part of him, to the walls of his viscera. Now the story was begging him to rework it: he could feel it pleading with him for help. This was something that only Tengo could do. It was a job well worth doing, a job he simply had to do. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#28. Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#29. I don't really listen to the radio anymore, but some of the more contemporary people I like are Stereolab, Spiritualize, Yo La Tengo and Bedhead. There are other things too, like Pavement. They're a great band, with really good lyrics. But generally, I'm not overwhelmed by the state of indie-rock. #Quote by Dean Wareham

#30. Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as represented by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze in silence, its dark, sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were no maps, no numbered doorways.... Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between himself and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a stronger pull on his heart... Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#31. His father said nothing. Instead, he looked straight at Tengo as if he were reading a bulletin written in a foreign language.
1Q84, Murakami #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#32. Around the borders of the flat, lopsided area of his head clung thick, black, curly hair that had been allowed to grow too long, hanging down shaggily over the man's ears. Ninety-eight people out of a hundred would probably be reminded by it of pubic hair. Tengo had no idea what the other two would think. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#33. Blurring the line between possible and impossible, linear and non-linear time, fiction and reality, fate and free will, 1Q84 is both a metaphysical mind-teaser and a fast-paced thriller where the stakes for Tengo and Aomame couldn't be any higher. Murakami's most ambitious novel to date, 1Q84 is also an extraordinary love story, a story about the power of a single moment of deep connection to transcend time and space - and justify even the greatest of risks. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#34. Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely. Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able - but just barely - to preserve their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo felt, would be sheer torture. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#35. He was no Hitchcockian protagonist, embroiled in a conspiracy before he knew what was happening. He had embroiled himself, knowing full well that it contained an element of risk. The machine was already in motion, gaining too much forward momentum for him to stop it. Tengo himself was one of its gears - and an important one at that. He could hear the machine's low groaning, and feel its implacable motion. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#36. My friend Phil Morrison directed a lot of my favorite videos back in the mid- to late-90s - all the Yo La Tengo videos that were funny, a Juliana Hatfield video. He was such an influence with me, and I wanted to do a video the way Phil used to do videos. I did that for Phil. #Quote by Tom Scharpling

#37. I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.'
Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [ ... ] We needed that much time ... to understand how lonely we really were. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#38. Tengo has an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and discovering the simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#39. No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#40. As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn't much of a difference to begin with, he though, maybe we just decided, for convenience's sake, to insist on a difference. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#41. For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#42. Komatsu's view is that there are always two sides to everything," Tengo said. "A good side and a not-so-bad side. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#43. Tengo could hardly believe it
that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two people's hearts
a boy's and a girl's
could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn't seen each other for twenty years. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#44. As he made his morning coffee, Tengo found himself silently wishing that this peaceful time could go on forever. If he said it aloud, some keen-eared demon somewhere might overhear him. And so he kept his wish for continued tranquility to himself. But things never go the way you want them to, and this was no exception. The world seemed to have a better sense of how you wanted things not to go. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#45. I've got to get Brittany alone if I'm gonna have any chance of saving face and saving my Honda. Does her freakout session mean she really doesn't hate me? I've never seen that girl do anything not scripted or 100 percent intentional. She's a robot. Or so I thought. She's always looked and acted like a princess on camera every time I've seen her. Who knew it'd be my bloody arm that would crack her.
I look over at Brittany. She's focused on my arm and Miss Koto's ministrations. I wish we were back in the library. I could swear back there she was thinking about getting it on with me.
I'm sporting la tengo dura right here in front of Miss Koto just thinking about it. Gracias a Dios the nurse walks over to the medicine cabinet. Where's a large chem book when you need one? #Quote by Simone Elkeles

#46. Tengo chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsley, too, he chopped up finely. He peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp out in neat rows, like troops in formation. When the edamame were finished boiling, he drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and dribbled in some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped ginger over a low flame. #Quote by Haruki Murakami

#47. Grasping the doorknob, Tengo turned around one last time and was shocked to see a single tear running down from his father's eye. It shone a dull silver color under the ceiling's fluorescent light. To release that tear, his father must have squeezed every bit of strength from what little emotion he still had left. #Quote by Haruki Murakami