About to finally finish IQ84

I'm almost to the end of IQ84. I'm relishing these final few pages of this epic novel. So, instead of writing down my new favourites lines and passages, I just snapped a picture! In fact, I am so engrossed that I was reading and giving Kavita a bath at the same time. 

These few passages are from when Tamaru is interrogating and finally murdering the Bobblehead, Ushikawa. 

"'Cold or Not, God is Present'" he intoned, quietly, once more."

Shakespeare said it best," Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen head. "Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us look to the best in each other."

I love the detours in this novel. Almost all the characters in this novel make highly detailed and rather intellectual references to music (Janaìcek's symphony), short stories (one about a Cat Town), personal histories (like Tamaru describing his time at an orphanage and a boy who made rat sculptures), or Jung making an intricate stone house and inscribing it with a mysterious phrase, and so on.   Come to think of it, I think my favourite detours are those made by Tamaru. He is a bodyguard but his intellectual wealth is quite impressive. 

These detours are what makes this fantastical novel so rich. It is almost like discussing life in general - while we try to grapple with its mysteries or illogical or unfair twists, we try to understand them by referring to literature, art, and philosophy. While things are actually happening quite fast, these philosophical lapses bring the madness to a halt for a while.

You know how you never want a book to end? That is exactly how I am feeling right now!