"Oh, this is Kant".

Excerpt from After Dark. "I think about the old days a lot. Especially after I started running all over the country like this. If I try hard to remember, all kinds of stuff comes back -- really vivid memories. All of a sudden out of nowhere I can bring back things I haven't thought about for years. It's pretty interesting. Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other." Korogi stands there holding the remote control. "You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance of not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking, "Oh, this is Kant," or "Oh, this is the Yoimuri evening edition," or "Nice tits," while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction -- they're all just fuel." Korogi nods to herself. Then she goes on: "You know, I think if I didn't have that fuel, if I didn't have these memory drawers inside me, I would've snapped a long time ago. I would've curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. It's because I can pull the memories out of the drawers when I have to -- the important ones and the useless ones -- that I can go on living this nightmare of a life. I might think I can't take it any more, that I can't go on any more, but one way or another I get past that." (Murakami 2007: 168-169). Murakami, Haruki. After Dark. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Harvill Secker, 2007.