All that remains is a desert

"I love the process of starting from scratch, creating something, seeing it through till it was absolutely perfect. It was my bar, my own little world. Could you find this kind of happiness proofreading school textbooks? No way." - p.61

"Our world's exactly the same. Rain falls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by bird. But in the end everyone of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of a difference. All that remains is a desert. 

When I left the bar just before dawn, a light rain was falling on the main street in Aoyama. I was exhausted. Soundlessly, the rain soaked the rows of tall buildings, standing there like so many gravestones. I left my car in the bar's parking lot and walked home. On the way, I sat down on a handrail and watched a large crow that was cawing from the top of some traffic lights. The four a.m. streets looked shabby and filthy. The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall." - p.71

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami