murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"I do."
"Look, the world is an inherently unfair place. I didn't write the rules.
It's always been that way. I have never once deceived Hatsumi. She
knows I'm a shit and that she can leave me whenever she decides she
can't take it. I told her that straight from the start."
Nagasawa finished his beer and lit a cigarette.
"Isn't there anything about life that frightens you?" I asked.
"Hey, I'm not a total idiot," said Nagasawa. "Of course life frightens
me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for
everything else, though. I'm going to give it 100 per cent and go as far
as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I
intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at
that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that
makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit."
"Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live," I said. "Perhaps, but
I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In
my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than
you are."
"That's probably true," I said.
"I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the
hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a
fucking thing, and then they moan about it."
Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa. "The way
I see it, people are working hard. They're working their fingers to the
bone. Or am I looking at things wrong?"
"That's not hard work. It's just manual labour," Nagasawa said with
finality. "The "hard work' I'm talking about is more self-directed and
purposeful."
"You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it
easy?"
"That's it. I'm going to have Spanish mastered by next spring. I've got
English and German and French down pat, and I'm almost there with
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