Do you ever look at a picture of yourself and see a stranger in the background? Makes you wonder how many strangers have pictures of you. How many moments of other people’s lives have we been in? Were we a part of someone’s life when their dreams came true? Or were we there when their dreams died? Did we keep trying to get in as is if we were somehow destined to be there? Or did the shot take us by surprise? Just think. You could be a big part of someone else’s life and not even know it.
We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84