If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn’t afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they’re seventeen.
The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.
Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
“But don’t forget who you really are. And I’m not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you. You know who you really are. When you’re alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you.”
— Louis Sachar
“The name they gave you belongs to someone else, their invention of you; if you turn out not to be that person, you have to name yourself.”
— Chelsey Johnson, Stray City
Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland inside Ayumi, only she herself knew.
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now.
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
She had rooms in her mind that she would not look into.
secretive dreams 