from an email I received this morning

'Also, this February, HARUKI MURAKAMI, a Japanese novelist received grand prize from the Jerusalem Book Award, and this is what he said in his speech to received this very controversial award:

“ Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg…..Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is ‘The System.’ The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others…..I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelists’ job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories------stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.”

Sorry for the long quote. But I wanted to share this with you all, as we were deeply encouraged by it.'