The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it's raining.

Some passages from "South of the Border, West of the Sun" by Haruki Murakami.

This one is from the end of Chapter Four.

"College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain.

Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed -- maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable part of my being. I'd hit rock bottom and I knew it."

The next one comes in a few pages from the close of the book in Chapter Fifteen.

"I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself -- as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself. For your sake, I'd like to become a new person. It may not be easy, but if I give it my best shot, perhaps I can manage to change. The truth is, though, if put in the same situation again, I might very well do the same thing all over. I might very well hurt you all over again. I can't promise anything. That's what I meant when I said I had no right. I just don't have the confidence to win over that force in me."

And finally, there was this one, which was in the same conversation as the last one, but from the other participant.

"I used to have dreams too, you know. But somewhere along the line they disappeared. Before I met you. I killed them. I crushed them and threw them away. Like some internal organ you no longer need and you rip out of your body. I don't' know whether that was the right thing to do. But it was the only thing I could do at the time.... Sometimes I have this dream. The same dream over and over. Someone is carrying something in both hands, and comes up to me and says, 'Here, you've forgotten something.' I've been very happy living with you. I've wanted for nothing and never had any complaints. Still, something is chasing me. I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat. I'm being chased by what I threw away. You think you're the only one being chased, but you're wrong. You're not the only one who's thrown away something, who's lost something."

Ok and actually I really liked the closing lines of the book too.

Both elbows on the table, I covered my face with my palms.

Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it. The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it's raining.

Until someone came and lightly rested a hand on my shoulder, my thoughts were of the sea.