Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Haruki Murakami, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Haruki Murakami quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 2504 Haruki Murakami quotes for you to read and share.

Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000000631
I see many people who disguise themselves. I know some people who say, "I'm an artist, I'm very creative, I'm different from ordinary people." But I don't believe those people. I like to see the strangeness or weirdness in ordinary people or ordinary scenery or ordinary, everyday life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000000856
Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
The pain is an anchor, mooring me here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000003296
I think I'll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what's going to happen. I can still die after that - it won't be too late. Probably. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000003315
You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000003403
I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000005189
Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position survived: by minimizing her wounds - staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as possible. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000005238
My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories - not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000005845
Lovers born under an unlucky star," she said. "Sounds like it was written for the two of us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000005917
Now I don't know if you realize it, but the film industry's a small world. It's like living in a tenement at one end of a back alley. Not only do you see everybody's dirty laundry, but once rumors start, you can't stop 'em. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000005964
As long as he had managed to survive, he would have to start thinking of ways to go on living. Because -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000006051
Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000006654
Why do you guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least two hundred and fifty unclassy girls with long hair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000007171
Naturally I have zero friends. I've built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself. Who could like someone like that? They all keep an eye on me, but I'm just glad they didn't bother me. They might hate me, or even afraid of me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000008084
People can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the latter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000008093
Now people can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000010436
I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000010510
What I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply
myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000010576
Things are so convenient for us these days, our perceptions are probably that much duller. Even if its the same moon hanging in the sky, we may be looking at something quite different. Four hundred years ago, we might have had richer spirits that were closer to nature. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000014603
It seemed as if the colours of the real world around me had begun to drain away from my having done nothing more than read a few lines she had written. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000014604
People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000017685
You need to come face-to-face with the past, not as some naive, easily wounded boy, but as a grown-up, independent professional. Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see. Otherwise you'll carry around that baggage for the rest of your life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000017837
I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000017852
Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone? Why the hell does it have to be like that? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000018290
And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn't see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You're a part of me; I'm a part of you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000019129
I'd be doing it to screw the literary world. Those bastards all huddle in their gloomy cave and kiss each other's asses, and lick each other's wounds, and trip each other up, all the while spewing this pompous crap about the mission of literature. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000019849
Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows - maybe even tomorrow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000020254
- I hope I'm not getting in your way.
- I don't have any way for you to get in. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000021537
You are a major dimwit. Is your brain made out of jello, you spineless twit? A leaf? What do you think I am, one of those magical raccoons? I'm a concept, get it? Con-cept! Concepts and raccoons aren't exactly the same, now are they? What a dumb thing to say ... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000021686
To be able to talk to your heart's content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000021772
I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000023457
Don't tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies. (from Thailand) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000023637
But you can't go back now? To that orderly, harmonious, intimate place?'
He thought about this, though there was no need to. 'That place doesn't exist anymore,' he said quietly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000025098
You're not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It's simple. It's your right. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000025809
The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000029413
If you miss the bus, miss the train, you'd be left behind. So everyone says, let's get on the train, let's get on the bus and go faster and get rich ... I just didn't like that kind of lifestyle. I love to read books, to listen to music. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000029980
I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000030368
Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it."
-from "Hear the Wind Sing -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000031079
Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000031438
Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000031597
Each individual has their own unique color, which shines faintly around the contours of their body. Like a halo. Or a backlight. I'm able to see those colors clearly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000035076
I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000036704
Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000037733
One uproar after another, every day. Like the whole world's turned upside down. Don't you feel bad that you're missing out? The world isn't that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It's people who are turned upside down. I don't feel bad about missing that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000038666
No, I don't think I've been defiled. But I haven't been saved, either. There's nobody who can save me right now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The world looks totally empty to me. Everything I see around me looks fake. The only thing thay isn't fake is that gooshy thing inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000038909
it's even harder to talk about girls who have died young: by dying, they stay young forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000039576
I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000039611
I don't know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can't go around seeking it at other people's doors. Even if it is at the place you're most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000042346
As always, we sit on the narrow steps that lead from the Old Bridge down to the sandbar. A pale silver moon trembles on the face of the water. A wooden boat lashed to a post modulates the sound of the current. Sitting with her, I feel her warm against my arm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000043300
When pain comes to me, I leave my physical self. It's just like quietly slipping into the next room when someone you don't want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I recognize that the pain has come to my body; I feel the existence of the pain; but I am not there. I am in the next room. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000043768
No matter how hard you try to put everything neatly into shape, the context wanders this way and that, until finally the context isn't even there anymore. You're left with this pile of kittens lolling all over one another. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000044086
A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything's going to be all right. you've made it past Dead Man's Curve and you're out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000044153
Ah yes, you like to cook, don't you?
well, i used to. you need real dedication. fresh ingredients, a discerning palate, an eye for presentation. it's not a modern art. good cooking has hardly evolved since the nineteenth century. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000044204
Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000044478
Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing breath. Only Sumire could do that for me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000047362
Kafka, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000047857
Here, there is nothing my size. There's nobody around here to make himself the measure of everything, to praise or condemn others for their size -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000048310
The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000048909
But think about it -what if there were a deus ex machina in real life? Everything would be so easy! If you felt stuck or trapped, some god would swing down from up there and solve all your problems. What could be easier than that? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000049583
Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own - with whatever guts you can muster -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000050532
And people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll want to get stronger. Even if you're just pretending. Don't you think? There aren't any real strong people anywhere -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000050757
Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong. The -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000051118
Looking at her nails, Aomame had a strong sense of what a fragile, fleeting thing her own existance was. Something as simple as the shape of her fingernails: it had been decided without her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000051154
They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000051487
The world is full of ways and means to waste time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000051756
It was just that, no matter where I found myself, I felt like there was a hole inside me, with the wind rushing through. I never felt satisfied. From the outside you wouldn't imagine I had any troubles. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000051937
Needless to say, it takes quite a bit of time, plus effort, to go through each stage, step by step, and arrive at a conclusion. Sometimes it takes too long, and by the time I'm convinced, it's already too late. But what're you going to do? That's the kind of person I am. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000052325
I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000053814
If you hurt her any more than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000055234
Running taught me to have faith in my skills as a writer. I learned how much I can demand of myself, when I need a break, and when the break starts to get too long. I known how hard I am allowed to push myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000056133
once your get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own. And when your hopes are dashed you get dissapointed, and dissapointment leads to a feeling of helplessness. You get careless and let your guard down. And right now, she though, that si the last thing I can afford. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000057702
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000058757
You know what it's like when you're trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000059089
As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000060344
Many people tell me that they don 't know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That's good. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000060429
You're seeking something, but at the same time running away for all you're worth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000061344
Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000062588
You've got to spend your money for the things that money can buy, not worry about profit or loss. Save your energy for the things that money can't buy." He -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000063205
I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't ... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000064401
There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers ... 1Q84 - that's what I'll call this new world. Q is for 'question mark'. A world that bears a question. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000064830
In other words, let's face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won't seem to be worth all that. It's up to each individual to decide whether or not it is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000064985
Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on, living alone down there in the darkness ... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000067961
She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000069576
Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000070179
I miss her every now and then, but finally, she didn't move me. I don't know, sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000070957
Did all Finns like to make clever witticisms about life? Or was it just this one driver? Tsukuru hoped it was the latter. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000071415
The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling. There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. Could Sinfonietta actually be giving me this weird feeling? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000072044
If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000074272
Am I happy? If you asked me this, I'd have to say, 'Yeah, I guess.' Because dreams are, after all, just that: dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000077582
Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000078793
I don't like heavy baggage." The driver laughed. "Who does? But before you know it, you're surrounded by it. That's life. C'est la vie." And again, he laughed happily. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000080152
When a vacuum forms, something has to come along to fill it -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000080186
But it's strange, isn't it?" Eri said.
"What is?"
"That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000080493
Time had the power to cancel all changes wrought by human artifice, overwriting all new revisions with further revisions, returning the flow to its original course -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000083328
Okay, consider this. Say you're going to go on a long journey with someone by car. And the two of you will take turns driving. Which type of person would you choose? One who's a good driver, but inattentive, or an attentive person who's not such a good driver? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000083942
I love pop culture
the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that.
That's why I said I don't like elitism. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000084479
I try whistling to fill in the silence. The soprano sax from Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," though of course my dubious whistling doesn't come anywhere near the complex, lightning-quick original. I just add bits so what I hear in my head approximates the sound. Better than nothing, I figure. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000085704
There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000086986
You've already decided what you're going to do, and all that's left is to set the wheels in motion. I mean, it's your life. Basically, you gotta go with what you think is right. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000087117
We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000089355
I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000090674
It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000090838
Her greatest joy in life was knowing that her importance to the team was by no means small and that, as narrow as that world might be, she had been granted a definite place in it. Someone needed her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000091513
The resounding stillness gives the structures an impression of abandonment. Yet each time I turn down these streets, I can sense strangers behind the facades, holding their breath as they continue pursuits I will never know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000092712
But I'm not dead. I just disappeared. I do that. I move into another world, a different world. Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is. Don't you see? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000093309
I've been an outsider all my life. It's been kind of hard, but I like that way of living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000093366
Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.' -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000093496
People need to cling to something," Oshima says. "They have to. You're doing the same, even though you don't realise it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000093670
I wrote my first two long novels and an anthology of short narratives, when I was a manager of my own jazz bar. There was not enough time to write and I didn't know how to write novels. Therefore, I made written collages of aphorisms and rags. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000095532
Beyond the edge of the world there's a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000095653
1971 was the year of spaghetti.
In 1971 I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life ...
This is the story from the Year of Spaghetti, AD 1971. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000097435
There are some things, he concluded, that can only be expressed through a woman's form. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000099608
I don't know, it's stupid being 20," she said. "I'm just not ready. It feels weird. Like somebody's pushing me from behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000102435
I cry when I'm lonely. Reiko says it's good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000104083
Will I see you again?' Samsa asked one last time.
'If you think of someone enough, you're sure to meet them again,' she said in parting. This time there was real warmth in her voice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000106557
I found it challenging to give her an accurate account of his odd humanity, his unique philosophy, and his uncentred morality -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000107631
The seasons have changed, and we are getting close to the end of 1984," Tamaru said. "I doubt I'll finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000108266
If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000110616
That's how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Lime the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like rhat, dying doesn't seem like such a big deal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000110638
Oshima once used the term hollow men. Well, that's exactly what I've become. There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying. There's no direction where I am, no sky, no ground. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000110643
But finally, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, isn't that just what life is? Aren't we all trapped in the dark somewhere, and they've taken away our food and water, and we're slowly dying, little by little ... ? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000110758
I feel as if my every move is being controlled by some kind of incredibly long arm that's reaching out from somewhere far away, and that my life has been nothing more than a convenient passageway for all these things moving through it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000110999
I can't do what you can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000111477
I don't mind ironing at all. There's a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000111843
You know, Junpei, everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000112340
Something will work out tomorrow, I thought. And if not, then tomorrow I'll do some thinking. Ob - la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000114593
In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000116732
In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God's kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000117279
I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000118389
It was the first time he had seen her smile. It was the faintest of smiles, yet he felt the tides start to shift all over the world. He knew it was happening. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000119843
My sister's looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It's like one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that's half one idea and half the opposite. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000121915
If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe # running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000122586
It was her personal view that people who are overly choosy about the drinks they order in a bar tend to be sexually bland. She had no idea why this should be so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000122587
Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000123104
Everything was intertwined, with the complexity of a three-dimensional puzzle, a puzzle in which truth was not necessarily fact and fact not necessarily truth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000124759
As I was sipping the hot liquid, I realized that I had developed a kind of liking for this little man on the verge of death. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000125229
I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000125347
Where Watanabe and I are alike is we don't give a damn if nobody understands us ... That's what makes us different from everybody else. They're all worried about whether the people around them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don't give a damn. Self and others are separate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000126034
As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000126863
Astrud Gilberto sang an old bossa nova song. "Take me to Aruanda," she sang. I closed my eyes, and the clatter of the cups and saucers sounded like the roar of a far-off sea. Aruanda - what's it like there? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000127316
It was Aomame's firm belief that the human body was a temple, to be kept as strong and beautiful and clean as possible, whatever one might enshrine there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000127529
It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000128524
Are you really going to go all the way to Helsinki to see her without getting in touch first? All the way across the Arctic Circle?" "Is that too weird?" She laughed. " 'Bold' is the word I'd use for it." "I feel like things will work out better that way. Just intuition, of course. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000128657
Do you know what 'Sputnik' means in Russian? 'Travelling companion'. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It's just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000129026
Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it's utterly precious. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000130782
Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000130921
A concentrated phenomenon based on vague motives. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000130960
As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000132433
This all has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. Somehow coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them what happened today. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000132699
What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000136915
Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you
you should control them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000136941
- She's a great girl.
- I know. A little too great for me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000138836
747s always remind me of a fat, ugly old lady in the neighborhood where I used to live. Huge sagging breasts, swollen legs, dried up neckline. The airport, a likely gathering place for the old ladies. Dozens of them, coming and going, one after the other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000138845
747s always reminded me of a fat, ugly old lady in the neighborhood where I used to live. Huge sagging breasts, swollen legs, dried-up neckline. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000140074
I just got my signals crossed. First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even with a missing hand. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000140876
He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000140920
I'm not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000141616
People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000141640
Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000141680
Time flows in a strange way on Sundays. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000141790
And so we became friends. This happened in October. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000145088
I was impressed by the variety of dreams and goals that life could offer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000145849
In any case, I wrote, I've decided to make myself strong. As far as I can tell, that's all I can do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000147215
The sad fact is that language and logic cut off from reality have a far greater power than the language and logic of reality - with all that extraneous matter weighing down like a rock on any actions we take. In -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000147434
Who knows? You might get used to this slant on things (but if you did, you'd never be able to view the world again without holding your head out of true.) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000150455
So called art films. Movies like that never explained what was going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films "reality". -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000151696
The clouds looked like silent travelers headed for the edge of the earth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000151885
For him, the game is not to defeat the opponent, but to challenge his own abilities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000152299
If you want to sleep with me, I don't mind. I've never slept with anybody, and I'm very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don't mind at all. But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you
take on all my troubles, and they're a lot worse than you can imagine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000152341
We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000153064
He couldn't change my mind about him, though. I went on loving him just the same, and I could never be interested in anyone else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000153476
A sheet of white extends to the lone dark vertical of the elm tree in the centre ... It is too perfect, to inviolate ... The snow is graced with waves written by the wind, the elm raises crooked arms in sleeves of white. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000154072
I was happy being alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000154241
When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000155162
Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000155292
In the instant Miu touched her hair, Sumire fell in love, like she was crossing a field and bang! a bolt of lightning zapped her right in the head. Something akin to an artistic revelation. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000157004
In everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000158381
Maybe so, 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. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000158430
One thing became crystal clear to me when I couldn't see you anymore. I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until then was having you in my life. When I lost you, the pain and loneliness really got to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000158557
When I finished bathing after dinner, Kumiko was sitting in the living room with the lights out. Hunched down in the dark with her gray shirt on, she looked like a piece of luggage that had been left in the wrong place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000159867
April was too lonely a month to spend alone. In April, everyone around me looked happy. People would throw their coats off and enjoy each other's company in the sunshine - talking, playing catch, holding hands. But I was always by myself -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000161074
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000161292
As I relax on the sofa a thought hits me, this is exactly the place I've been looking for forever ... I can barely believe that it actually exists -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000162525
Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000164365
Slim young women were swathed in chic black dresses, here to attend a ceremony in one of the hotel's many reception rooms. They wore small but expensive accessories, like vampire finches in search of blood, longing for a hint of light they could reflect. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000164573
Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000164996
That sounds good. But I don't like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free-to go to where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I want. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000165022
One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000165533
Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000166410
It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000167926
I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000170793
He wished he could be with her longer, spend more time with her, have a good, leisurely talk. But she had her own life, most of which occurred offstage, in a place he didn't yet know about, doing things that had nothing to do with him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000171087
Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn't know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It's a terrible way to die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000171599
Painful is the stress when one cannot reproduce or convey vividly to others, however hard he tries, what he's experienced so intensely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000171745
Each woman has a drawer marked 'beautiful,' stuffed full of all sorts of meaningless junk. That's my specialty. I pull out those pieces of junk one by one, dust them off, and find some kind of meaning in them. That's all that sex appeal really is, I think. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000173572
You shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinary man. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000174327
When I write a novel I put into play all the information inside me. It might be Japanese information or it might be Western; I don't draw a distinction between the two. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000174455
The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000175288
But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000176262
Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000177545
Nothing abstruse or ambivalent about it, not a speck of the metaphoric or the symbolic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000179122
Tendencies. Yougottendencies. Soevenifyoudideverythingoveragain, yourwholelife, yougottendenciestodojustwhatyoudid, alloveragain. -The Sheep Man. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000179264
Just speak your mind honestly. That's the best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset, but in the long run, it's for the best. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000179651
You couldn't begin to imagine who I am, where I'm going, or what I'm about to do, All of you are trapped here. You can't go anywhere, forward or back. But I'm not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000180714
She was the type to keep riding the train the wrong way around. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000181526
What I mean to say is that in a highly exceptional reality [ ... ] the non-exceptional can, for convenience sake, be written off as paradoxically exceptional. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000184012
It's as if loosening that knot I'd never noticed before had slackened my interest along with it. At the same time that I'd lost something, something new had also taken root deep within me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000185754
You try to live straight in this crazy, crooked, mixed-up world - that's what's funny. You know what I mean?"
"I do, I do," I said.
"You don't even have to do anything especially funny. You just act normal. That alone looks strange and funny. Acting like that interests me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000186585
At least he never walked. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000187410
I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I'd be left all alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000189772
Some people are polite, and some are quick. Each one's a good quality to have, but most of the time quickness trumps politeness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000190402
The spring on a wound watch gets steadily looser, the torque grows closer and closer to zero, until he gears stop altogether and the hands come to rest at a set position. Silence descends. Isn't that all it is? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000190785
If you look at it the other way round, that's the only reason why this world is inside of me. Maybe it's a paradox, like an image reflected to infinity in a pair of facing mirrors. I am a part of this world, and this world is a part of me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000190870
Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000191016
Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000191252
The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000191506
- If you like me that much, you'll do anything I tell you to do, right? You won't get angry, right?
- No of course not.
- And you'll take care of me always and always.
- Of course I will. Don't worry, everything is going to be fine.
- But I'm scared. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000192922
Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000194400
Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields. Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000196799
This was always the problem when talking to Fuka-Eri. All roads inevitably gave out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000197002
I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000197540
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000197699
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000198620
There aren't any real strong people anywhere. Only people who can put on a good show of being strong. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000199140
Somehow the world survived the Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000199902
Forget about counting calories," she would always advise them. "Once you develop a knack for choosing the proper ingredients and eating in moderation, you don't have to pay attention to numbers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000200043
I looked as if I had just crawled out of a cave somewhere, but it was me after all. It was me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000200197
So then, we're never going to cry, that's just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The bastards! The more they wanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the satisfaction. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000200225
Good-bye, she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self that had lived here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000200472
In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000202214
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000202822
Also I've got a dozen pencils, all sharpened and laid out in a row. They're brand-new. I just bought them at the stationery store - especially for writing to you (not that I'm trying to make you feel grateful or anything: just-sharpened, brand-new pencils are really nice, don't you think?). -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000204052
There's at least one good thing about TV," he said after a while. "You can shut it off whenever you like. And nobody complains. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000204215
We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we went to different schools and lived two train stops apart was all it took for me to feel our worlds had changed completely -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000204826
To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000206219
I'm not totally mad at you. I'm just sad. You're all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000206265
Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000207421
A nice face goes a long way with me," she said. "And yours ... well, the more I look at it, the more I get to thinking, "He'll do'."
"Me, too," I said. "Every once in a while, I think about myself, "What the hell, I'll do'. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000207553
I don't know, there's something about you. Say there's an hourglass: the sand's about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000207567
Reality spills through her slim fingers like the sands of an hourglass. Thus time is by no means on her side -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000207603
If everybody went around understanding each other without asking questions or speaking their mind, they'd never get anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000207658
We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000212433
But I don't have any confidence ."
"Why not ?"
"Because I have no sense of self . I have no personality , no brilliant color . I have nothing to offer . That's always been my problem . I feel like an empty vessel . I have a shape , I guess , as a container but there's nothing inside . -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000215905
I felt as if I were living alone in an extremely well-cared-for ruin. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000216603
Until Edison invented the electric light, most of the world was totally covered in darkness. The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000217656
I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that's a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of "reservoir," albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000219405
It rained for a short time while I was running, but it was a cooling rain that felt good. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000224902
But don't get me wrong. I'm not totally mad at you. I'm just sad. You were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that you're having yours, it seems there's not a thing I can do for you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000224937
To tell the truth, though, I don't think I deserve your kindness. I'm trying my best to be a much better person, but things aren't going so well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000225290
Even if I give myself over to the madness-or prejudice-here and now, even if doing so destroys me, even if this world vanishes in its entirety, what do I have to lose? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000225296
Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000225506
To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000225524
She took Tsukuru's business card, her whole face lighting up in a smile, then pushed an extension number on her phone as if pressing the soft nose of an oversized dog. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000228726
One time, as the cold wind blew and she kept watch over the playground, Aomame realized she believed in God. It was a sudden discovery, like finding, with the soles of your feet, solid ground beneath the mud. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000231020
One foot in front of the other. Repeat as often as necessary to finish. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000231679
He and Eri had to hold each other now, as much as they wanted. They had to let their skin touch, and drive away the long shadow cast by evil spirits. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000232036
My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!
That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000233172
Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000233883
Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000234289
He was a tiny piece in a gigantic puzzle. But instead of having one fixed shape, his shape kept changing. And so - of course - he couldn't fit anywhere. As he tried to sort out where he belonged, he was also given a set amount of time to gather the scattered pages of the timpani section of a score. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000235821
She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000236507
You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000236637
It's really very simple. You sought me out. That's the biggest reason. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000237098
It's strange, but when I have to speak in front of an audience, I find it more comfortable to use my far-from-perfect English than Japanese. I think this is because when I have to speak seriously about something in Japanese I'm overcome with the feeling of being swallowed up in a sea of words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000238703
My
emotional compass had vanished. I lost all sense of
direction, of time, of the sense of who I was. I don't know
when it began, or when it ended, but before I knew it I was
locked away, alone and numb in the endless winter of that
world of ice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000242260
Well, look at it another way: why shouldn't there be cats in a zoo?" I said.
"They're animals, too, right?"
"Cats and dogs are your run-of-the-mill-type animals. Nobody's going to pay money to see them," he said. "Just look around you-they're everywhere. Same thing with people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000242510
I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000242585
Still, the moon stood out clearly against the sky. It hung up there faithfully, without a word of complaint concerning the city lights or the noise or the air pollution. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000242586
I am nothing. I'm like someone who's been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000243442
In dreams begins responsiblities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000243793
Everyone just abandoned us there the whole time and walked on by. It was absolutely terrible. As -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000244210
I'm thinking it would be wonderful if I could follow you into that world where you're going." "And leave this world behind?" "That's right," she said. "It's a boring old world anyway. I'm sure it'd be much more fun living in your consciousness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000244328
Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000248095
When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000248613
Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000248848
I don't know why I'm so crazy about cats. I like how they are soft and warm, and individualistic, kind of like me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000249606
Not to excuse myself, but when you have people right in front of you denying your very presence like that, then see if you don't doubt whether you actually exist. I look at my hands half expecting to see clear through them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000249614
Not to excuse myself, but you have people right in front of you denying your very presence like that, then see if you don't doubt whether you actually exist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000251214
You always look so cool, like no matter what happens, it's got nothing to do with you, but you're not really like that. In your own way, you're out there fighting as hard as you can, even if other people can't tell by looking at you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000252463
Alienation and loneliness became a cable that stretched hundreds of miles long, pulled to the breaking point by a gigantic winch. And through that taut line, day and night, he received indecipherable messages. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000252851
All I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody's reach. A place beyond the flow of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000253405
Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000253431
The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000254655
So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Watanabe: Wow, and did your search pay off?
M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000254908
People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000255232
It's my motto for life. 'Walk slowly; drink lots of water. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000257026
Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000257087
All I did was go to the library to borrow some books -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000257288
If I'm going to merely ramble, maybe I should just snuggle under the warm covers, think of Miu, and play with myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000258499
There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000258723
It almost hurt to look at that far-off sky. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000259393
But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it's an activity he doesn't really care for, he won't keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn't be good for him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000260184
You finally fall asleep. And when you wake up, it's true. You are part of a brand-new world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000261437
Eventually, when the first phase of the process ended, she began to cry. She cried quietly, even silently, burring her face in her hands, her shoulder quivering, as if she wanted to be sure that no one else in the world could tell that she was crying. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000261627
They seem to be used to passing people, and probably not used to being passed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000261699
How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then - Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It's true, I can't even bring back Naoko's face - not right away, at least. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000261857
Will you please get that look off your face? You're gonna make me cry. Don't worry, I know you're in love with somebody else. I'm not expecting anything from you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000262919
Maybe she thought the garbage and rocks in your head were interesting. But finally, garbage is garbage and rocks are rocks. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000262937
But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263062
Colors shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263341
Well, you can try to rationalize it all you want, you can invent all kinds of noble-sounding pretexts, but in the end, a scam is a scam. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263924
I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263926
It's hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot worse if it weren't for you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263928
Despite your best effort, people are going to hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263931
But your problems are not going to continue for the rest of your life -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263933
Thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000263934
Everybody feels like that to some extent," I said. "They're trying to express themselves and it bothers them when they can't get it right. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000264559
Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love with him, but she never made demands.
'I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi,' Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000264998
A child should learn from early on what kind of activity supported his daily life, and he should appreciate the importance of labor. Tengo -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000266325
The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000266520
All sorts of people told me their stories. Then they left, never to return, as if I were no more than a bridge they were clattering across. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000266759
I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000271077
Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000271235
I couldn't tell wether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of season -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000272997
As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000273221
As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. That's one of the few good points of growing older -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000273435
Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose). -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000274328
And on every rooftop stood unimaginably tall television antennae. These silver feelers groped about in the air, in defiance of the mountains that formed a backdrop to the town. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000275391
I never had any ambitions to be a novelist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000276469
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000277056
The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000279837
Things like this don't happen all that often in one lifetime. This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel. Just brace yourself and enjoy the smell of evil. We're shooting the rapids. And when we go over the falls, let's do it together in grand style! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000279915
That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000280573
Unsure how to answer, I took another grape. Time was no problem for me, but I wasn't eager to hear the long life story of a dwarf. And besides, this was a dream. It could evaporate any moment. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000281351
What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. ( ... ) Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn't seek validation in the outwardly visible. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000281403
What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, It's all your fault! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000285270
Guns are like cars: you can trust a good used one better than one that's brand-new. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000285568
Some things in life are just to complicated to explain in any language.'
Olga was absolutely right, Tsukuru thought as he sipped his wine. Not just to explain to others, but to explain to yourself. Force yourself to try to explain it, and you create lies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000285569
Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000285577
Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000286519
Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going - people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward. After -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000287594
Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000288717
Let her be spared from anguished dreams, I found myself hoping. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000289015
Of course you got rights, the law's on your side, but sometimes the law takes a long time to kick in and so it gets put in the hands of us poor suckers on duty. You get my drift? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000291083
I am afraid to die, though,' I whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive words, but it was too late to change them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000291277
Sometimes you need to stop , take a deep breath, and empty your head. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000291539
This was the world of the living - no matter how uncertain and imperfect a world it might be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000291816
I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000292986
You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000294412
Haida preferred to listen to instrumental music, chamber music, and vocal recordings. Music where the orchestral component was loud and prominent wasn't to his liking. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000294791
If Sara chooses me, accepts me, he thought, I'm going to propose to her right away. And give her everything I'm capable of giving - every single thing. Before I get lost in a dark forest. Before the bad elves grab me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000296054
What's more, you're loads better than you think you are."
"So why is it I get to thinking that way?" I puzzled.
"That's because you're only half-living." she said briskly. "The other half is still untapped somewhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000296322
Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000296721
Any religion that would prohibit life-saving surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of the Bible cane nothing other than a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the line. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000296825
I'm not going to lay off or quit just because I'm busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000297161
At three-thirty, she announced, I gotta get going. I'm supposed to meet my sister in the Ginza. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000297999
This time sleep came to take me - a deep sleep that all but pulled me by the ankles to the bottom of the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000298646
One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000298693
Let the wind change direction a little bit, and their cries turned to whispers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000299054
I'm not saying it isn't habit forming, but it's much milder than tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine. Law enforcement says it's addictive, but that's ridiculous. If you believe that, then pachinko is far more dangerous. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000299672
Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000300025
Just listen to the wind," he says. "That's what I always do." I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000300774
The
Earth, after all, doesn't creak and groan its way around the sun
just so human beings can have a good time and a bit of a laugh. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000300800
The pursuer's blind spot is that he never thinks he's being pursued. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000301351
Most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don't see a thing. Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby's arm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000301578
But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it's right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that's how I became the person I am now. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000303304
When I wake up, my pillow's cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000303455
Tengo had no idea, of course, what Aomame had offered to the mood that time, but he could well imagine what the moon had given her: pure solitude and tranquility. That was the best thing the moon could give a person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000303652
Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it's too late. Say what you're feeling. Waiting is a mistake. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000304348
This is the end, Fuka-Eri informed him in a whisper. One sentence, as always. Time stopped, and the world ended. The earth ground slowly to a halt, and all sound and light vanished. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000304464
we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact,
we may not be choosing anything.
It could be that anything's decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices.
Free will may be an illusion -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000305131
It's a thrill to look at the clear night sky and discover a new star before anybody else sees it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000305647
Happiness is a warm friendship. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000306325
The true enemy of this bunch was not State Power but Lack of Imagination. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000307634
When everything's twisted, what's normal ends up looking weird too. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000308246
I started to go to the library, devouring every book I could lay my hands on. Once I began a book, I couldn't put it down. It was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000309127
There're a lot of odd things going on
but I feel like I'm slowly getting
closer to the truth."
-"Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting
closer to an actual truth? Or maybe they supplement each other? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000309157
Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting closer to an actual truth? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000309165
I want to find my way to where you are-you, the Kumiko who wants me to rescue her ... I wanted to let you know that. I'm getting closer to where you are, and I intend to get closer still. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000309328
It suddenly occurred to me that true believers in hard-driving jazz - Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor - could never become owners of cleaning shops in malls across from railroad stations. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000310448
No one can know everything about another person. Not even God, probably. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000310850
Is it possible, finally, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000311235
For a ten-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl to become good friends was not easy under any circumstances. Indeed, it might be one of the most difficult accomplishments in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000311843
Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000312881
Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000312989
Becoming a different person might be hard, but taking on a different name is a cinch. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000313330
She twirled a pen in her fingers a second, giving me a I've-got-something-to-tell-you-but-I-don't-know-how-to-say-it look. Clearly, she wasn't used to doing this sort of thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000313809
If possible, I'd like to avoid that kind of literary burnout. My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000315356
You said you're going far away," Tamaru said. "How far away are we talking about?"
"It's a distance that can't be measured."
"Like the distance that separates one person's heart from another's. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000315978
The basic stupidity of modern Japan is that we've learned absolutely nothing from our contact with other Asian peoples. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000317477
At some point paradise would be lost. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000318718
Another person's life is that person's life. You can't take responsibility. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000319718
I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not associating with all the people around me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000320194
We're talking about a revelation here,' Colonel Sanders said, clicking his tongue. 'A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. that's what critical.'
~page 275 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000320427
People think of all kinds of things at three in the morning. We all do. That's why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000320471
Even chance meetings are the result of karma ... Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there's no such thing as coincidence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000321966
Too many memories of her were crammed inside of me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000322213
A gentle silence descended on them, suggestive of the flow of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000323136
The exact same text was slightly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000325486
Cats know everything. Not like dogs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000326731
What did you expect? Tsukuru asked himself. A basically empty vessel has become empty once again. Who can you complain to about that? People come to him, discover how empty he is, and leave. What's left is an empty, perhaps even emptier, Tsukuru Tazaki, all alone. Isn't that all there is to it? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000327977
I've never once thought about how I was going to die," she said. "I can't think about it. I don't even know how I'm going to live. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000329805
I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000331548
Life was to be measured by the color and variety of its episodes, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000333048
Civilization means transmission, he said. Whatever can't be expressed might as well not exist. Get the picture? It'd be good for exactly zero. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000333576
I all of a sudden got to feeling like talking to people. Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean. I'm weird like that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000333588
Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000334411
Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000334419
It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000334938
I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it's not imagination. It's just a way of watching. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000334965
Thinking about lunch. Smoked salmon with pedigreed lettuce and razor-sharp slices of onion that have been soaked in ice water, brushed with horseradish and mustard, served on French butter rolls baked in the hot ovens of Kinokuniya. A sandwich made in heaven -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000335021
My life ended when I was 20. Since then it's been merely a series of endless reminiscences, a dark, winding corridor leading nowhere. Nevertheless, I had to live it, surviving each empty day, seeing each day off still empty. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000336478
May you live a rich and fruitful life, and may there be nothing to cast dark shadows on it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000336731
We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something - with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000337840
Why are you staring at me?" she'd ask.
"'Cause you're pretty," I'd reply.
"You're the first one who's ever said that."
"I'm the only one who knows," I'd tell her. "And believe me, I know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338207
It was a small soft hand. I thought my heart might break in two. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338401
She was the only thing that held together the fragile, provisional me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338724
It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338889
One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues."
-from "Heart the Wind Sing -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338901
Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues. All the same, were we to speak only the truth all year round, then the truth might lose its value. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000338906
I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000340789
Exactly. Chekhov was a great writer, but not all novels have to follow his rules. Not all guns in stories have to be fired, Tamaru said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000340793
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 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000340800
Chekhov was a great writer, but not all novels have to follow his rules. Not all guns in stories have to be fired, Tamaru -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000341082
Violence does not always take physical form, and not all wounds gush blood. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000341894
Each of us had all the troubles we could carry. They rained down on us from the sky, and we raced around in a frenzy to pick them up and stuff them in our pockets. Why we did that stumps me, even now. Maybe we thought they were something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000342574
The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000344594
I noticed for the first time that his expression was completely changed - strangely expressionless, eyes out of focus. He seemed to be staring into a void. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000346372
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000346533
There is a slight difference between collecting fifty wine labels and collecting fifty pinball machines. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000347102
Deep, special pain bestows deep, special grace - not that the grace alleviates the pain, of course. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000347451
Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed
right to grow old. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000349031
Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last. The interval between varies in direct proportion to the size of ship. With anything of size, truth takes a long time in coming. Sometimes it only manifests itself posthumously. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000350274
The music had an ambitious, virtuoso structure, but at the same time it was beautifully introspective. It honestly and delicately expressed, in a full, tangible way, what it meant to be alive. A crucial aspect of the world that could only be expressed through the medium of music. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000350954
The world's crawling with stupid,
innocent girls, and I'm just one of them, self-consciously
chasing after dreams that'll never come true. I should shut the
piano lid and come down off the stage. Before it's too late. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000352030
This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution
abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal ... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000354547
Wakeful nights often give people useless thoughts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000355395
It was the greatest stroke of good fortune he had ever encountered in life. In other words, he had finally worked his way up to the lowest spot on the totem pole. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000355798
The library was like a second home. Or maybe more like a real home, more than the place I lived in. By going every day I got to know all the lady librarians who worked there. They knew my name and always said hi. I was painfully shy, though, and could barely reply. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000356042
My life might have been totally different if I hadn't been born with this name. If I had had an ordinary name like Sato or Tanaka or Suzuki, I could have lived a slightly more relaxed life or looked at people with somewhat more forgiving eyes. Perhaps. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000358422
There in the dim light, staring at the shadow on the wall, I poured out the story of my life. ( ... ) How nothing touched me. And I touched nothing. How I'd lost track of what mattered. How I worked like a fool for things that didn't. How it didn't make a difference either way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000360180
I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000361489
What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000362090
Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000362424
I know these things. I'm always right. It's got nothing to do with logic: I just feel it. For example, when I'm really close to you like this, I'm not the least bit scared. Nothing dark or evil could ever tempt me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000362458
The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I'm just scared of my own shadow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000362614
But listen to me
there are times in life when those kinds of excuses don't cut it anymore. Situations when nobody cares whether you're suited for the task at hand or not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000363507
Waiting for your
answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At
least let me know whether or not I hurt you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000365825
We used to spend hours talking. We never got tired of talking, never raun out of topics - novels, the world, scenery, language. Our conversations were more open and intimate than ane lovers'. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000367219
There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without water. Why, ninety-five percent of the information that reaches you has already been preselected and paid for. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000367977
Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000370240
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in the dark. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond my grasp. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000371936
Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000373156
You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000373920
I don't want to express my opinion about actual politics, because if I do, I have to be responsible for my decision. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000374426
Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut. Everybody was hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000374446
It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one's hearing to it.
...
The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000375175
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000376163
Still leaning against the handrail, I studied the firefly. Neither I nor it made a move for a very long time. The wind continued sweeping past the two of us while the numberless leaves of the zelkova tree rustled in the darkness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000377153
Not being bored means not having to think about a lot of stupid stuff. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000377474
Fuka-Eri started to offer an opinion on the matter but then had second thoughts and stopped. Her opinion, unvoiced, snack back into the place it had originated from - a deep, dark, unknown place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000377488
It might not be perfect, but the fundamental stance I adopted with regard to my home was to accept it, problems and all, because it was something I myself had chosen. If it had problems, these were almost certainly problems that had originated within me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000377650
Dancingiseverything,' continued the Sheep Man. 'Danceintip-topform. Dancesoitallkeepsspinning. Ifyoudothat, wemightbeabletodosomethingforyou. Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000377864
The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000378038
Alphaville is the title of one of my favorite movies. Jean-Luc Godard. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000378050
Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000378610
Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about is this: That's life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what's going on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000378887
So even though he was an alien he was never an outcast. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000379158
Surfing's a more profound kind of sport than it looks. When you surf, you learn not to fight the power of nature, even if it gets violent. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000379548
Each "way of thinking" has its own shape and color, which wax and wane like the moon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000380753
He wasn't a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life - as though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid catching - he never talked about his feelings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000380851
But no one was asking me. I was here to do a job, and gray steel lockers or pale peach jukebox was no business of mine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000380864
I'm not asking for sympathy, but it would be nice if you could give me a bit more in the way of a response. Other than those cold interjections of yours - ohs and ums. How about a conjunction? A conjunction would be nice. A yet or a but. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381143
I'll bet they think they can leave you alone because you've really got it together.
But maybe sometimes you don't really have it together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381170
No,' I said, 'I don't want to go anywhere alone. I'll fall apart if I don't have you. I need you. Please, don't leave me alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381389
He comes out of the mine about the same as when he went in. He has no sense that it was something he decided to do himself, or that he had a choice. He's like totally passive. But I think in real life people are like that. It's not so easy to make choices on your own. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381469
People need things like that to go on living - mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations with these things. That's what I think. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381497
I have to somehow get connected to reality again, he thought, or else I won't be me anymore. I'll become a man who doesn't exist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000381935
Whoa!" he says with a smile. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. "Chicken salad a la George Orwell! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000383076
groping uncertainly for the meaning of her own flesh. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000384105
The truth is this: life is empty. However, help is available. If you know from the outset, it's almost as if life's not really meaningless at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000384542
It's difficult to teach how to write novels, but teaching swimming is just as hard. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000384927
Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000385568
A simple change of scenery can bring about powerful shifts in the flow of time and emotions -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000385619
Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they've told me. Do you think that's crazy?
"No," I said, shaking my head, "I'd guess your method works quite well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000385735
You're always Tsukuru," Eri said, and laughed quietly. "So I don't mind. The Tsukuru who makes things. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000386346
All things in my novels are real for me. Some western critics said that Garcia Marquez's novels are magic realism. However, I believe that Marquez must have experienced everything in his novels. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000386353
I believed in all seriousness that by converting my life into numbers I might be able to get through to people. That having something to communicate could stand as proof I really existed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000387000
What season?" I asked. "A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone else's. If I'm not careful, I might end up left behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000387005
Of course, they're not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000387321
Sometimes you're just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000388218
For a while is a phrase whose length can't be measured.At least by the person who's waiting. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000388743
Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000389344
Perhaps I'm just too painstaking a type of person, but I can't grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000390269
I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000390829
It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000390971
She might as well have used something other than words, but she had not come across a more appropriate medium. It was as simple as that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000391298
To tell you the truth, though, I loved his weak side, too. I loved it as much as I loved his good side. There was absolutely nothing mean or sneaky about him. He was weak: that's all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000391707
Nobody would take the time and effort to hang a fake moon in a real sky. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000392151
You don't know if she shares the same strong, pure feelings you have for her," Oshima comments. I shake my head. "It hurts to think about it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000392214
The thing is you're looking for something two-dimensional and not quite real. It never lasts. But you can't expect something unreal to last anyway, can you? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000392389
It's not so strange that when your memories change, the world changes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000392762
Love and used Subarus were two different things. Weren't they? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000393070
What's really important in life is always the things that are secondary. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000393423
No Good News in This Chapter -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000393931
As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn't much of a difference to begin with, he though, maybe we just decided, for convenience's sake, to insist on a difference. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000395126
Your life's just begun and there's a ton of things out in the world you've never laid eyes on. Things you never could imagine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000396429
Eventually, Malta Kano withdrew her hand from mine and took several deep breaths. Then she nodded several times. "Mr. Okada," she said, "I believe that you are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur. The disappearance of your cat is only the beginning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000397877
He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn't now. The only place for him was where he was now. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000399538
I began guitar after coming here as there wasn't a piano about. I taught myself, but my fingers just aren't cut out for the guitar, so I can't seem to get very good. Still, I like the innstrument. It's light, simple, straighforward, like a warm little room, nice and cozy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000400908
No matter where I find myself, this is the time of day I love best. The time that's mine alone. It'll be dawn soon, and I'm sitting here writing. Like Buddha, born from his mother's side (the right or the left, I can't recall), the new sun will lumber up and peek over the edge of the hills. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000401114
If a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000401635
That happens sometimes, right? It's
on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't think of it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000401910
There are all kinds of things we have to deal with in life," Eri finally said. "And one thing always seems to connect with another. You try to solve one problem, only to find that another one you hadn't anticipated arises instead. It's not that easy to get free of them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000402176
They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000402839
And you'll return to real life. You need to live it to the fullest. No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. I guarantee it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000403594
When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's 'The Thieving Magpie,' which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000403602
Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think - about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000404380
Would you call what I'm going through a defection? Defection? For a moment I couldn't figure out what she meant.
Defection. Betraying your beliefs and convictions. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000406407
Six years during which time I'd laid three cats to rest. Burned how many aspirations, bundled up how much suffering in thick sweaters, and buried them in the ground. All in this fathomlessly huge city Tokyo. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000407210
My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart ... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000409275
Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000411087
He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000411943
She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000412484
What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as thought he were rewriting the past.It was the only way -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000412846
I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000413250
That helped give me a sense of normal. And getting back to normal was everything. Everybody was counting on me to be normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000413489
Running a service-oriented business means you have to accept whoever comes through the door. No matter who comes in, unless they're really awful, you have to greet them with a friendly smile on your face. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000417062
His hairline had receded from the forehead and his sparse remaining hair recalled a frosty meadow in late autumn. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000418036
Now that you've said hello, I'm afraid we move right into farewells. Hello, goodbye. Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell, as they say, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000419758
Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000420900
If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000421348
Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000421612
And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000421907
Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000422255
Eyes mark the shape of the city. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000422942
That's good. I was worried. Of course, I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. I'd hate to think they were obvious to anybody else. Especially at the swimming pool in the summer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000423137
It's kind of embarrassing to put this into words," she said, "but I want to stay friends with you, Junpei. Not just for now, but even after we get older. A lot older. I love Takatsuki, but I need you, too, in a different way. Does that make me selfish? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000423300
Domenico Scarlatti wrote 555 piano sonatas during his lifetime, most of them when he was between the ages of fifty-seven and sixty-two.) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000424234
You're very clear about what you like and what you don't like," she said.
"Maybe so," I said. "Maybe that's why people don't like me. Never have."
"It's because you show it," she said. "You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000424730
Once you do learn about the truth, you end up having to take a certain responsibility for it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000425623
So you finally made Naoko yours,' I heard myself telling him. 'Oh well, she was yours to begin with. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000425848
Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000425892
There are two types of drinkers: those who drink to enhance their personalities, and those who sought to take something away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000426194
Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000426740
In these dreams, I'm there, implicated in some ongoing circumstance. All indications are that I belong to this dream continuity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000428737
Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth," I answered honestly. "Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000429204
Sad hotels existed everywhere, to be sure, but the Dolphin was in a class of its own. The Dolphin Hotel was conceptually sorry. The Dolphin Hotel was tragic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000430137
All he felt was sorrow, as if he'd been abandoned at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. That's all it was - sorrow. That, and simple physical pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000430143
What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud? ... the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000430826
I don't give a damn about what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000431651
The past and the present, might we say, go like this. The future is a maybe. Yet we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us fair, we only come up with another indefinite maybe. The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000432496
Strange as it may seem - or perhaps it does not seem so strange - they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000432767
She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something - anything - to save her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000433183
My reflection in the mirror wasn't me. It looked like exactly like me on the outside, but it definitely wasn't me. No, that's not it. It was me, of course, but another me. Another me that never should have been. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000433698
All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000435093
It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000437463
A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it-even if the person himself wants to stop it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000437655
Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, though, she felt that now there was nothing for her to hate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000439896
Things that appear to be complicated - and that in fact are complicated - are very simple where motives are concerned. Motive is the root of desire, so to speak. The important thing is to seek out the root. Dig beneath the complicated surface of reality -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000440243
If we reverse the outer shell and the essence
in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell
our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000440419
Everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, I'm glad that's not me. It's basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000440444
I'm safe inside this container called me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000441256
She didn't answer. Instead, she smiled sweetly. It was a smile so radiant that the air seemed to thin around it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000441311
And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000441550
To conserve energy, her little planet stopped spinning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000441652
I never had a cat again. I still like cats, though I decided at
the time that that poor little cat who climbed the tree and never
returned would be my first and last cat. I couldn't forget that
little cat and start loving another. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000441898
I watched her long, straight hair swaying right and left where it met her shoulders. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000442469
Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000442521
He liked doing research in the library. He liked feeling of accumulating knowledge in his brain. It was something he had enjoyed ever since he was a child. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000443106
But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness."
"You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000444395
Tengo had a gift for such work. He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000446599
Nakata never went into these conversations with cats expecting to be able to easily communicate everything. You have to anticipate a few problems when cats and humans try to speak to each other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000447345
Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000447503
The darknesses inside and out began to blend, and I began to move outside of my self, the container that held me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000447700
Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000448021
Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000448413
Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people's eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000449894
I can't imagine how American readers will react to a novel, but if the story is appealing it doesn't matter much if you don't catch all the detail. I'm not too familiar with the geography of nineteenth century London, for instance, but I still enjoy reading Dickens. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000453228
A spider had no special skill other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000453565
If that's true, then what's the value of human free will?"
"That's a great question," Haida said, and smiled quietly. The kind of smile a cat gives as it stretches out, napping in the sun. "I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. Not yet. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000454715
Dreams are the kind of things you can borrow and lend out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000454832
People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000455028
I felt defenseless when my hair got short all of a sudden. As if somebody had thrown me into a crowd all naked. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000457244
I've run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the people's support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000457254
I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000457366
That is dreamreading. As the birds leave south or north in their season, the Dreamreader has dreams to read. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000457574
I never want to be bound to anything. I always want to be able to come and go as I please. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000458742
A person probably couldn't live without pride. But living by pride, alone the prospects were too dark. Way too dark. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000459329
Our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000459438
They're old enough to know how the world really works, so why are they so stupid? It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you can clean up the shit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000459882
Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000459893
I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000460609
Body language generally fails to have its intended effect on the phone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000461181
Thinking back ( ... ) all that comes to mind for me is a swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a swamp. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000464068
Virtually everything inside me had spilled out and been lost. I was completely new, but I was also completely empty. I had to fill in that blank, little by little. With my own hands, I had to construct this thing I called 'I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000464355
After all, what does the stock market sell us if not the unfounded hope of a rosy future? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000464395
Hell has no true bottom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467479
Tengo has an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and discovering the simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467480
As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students' heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world's riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467481
He followed his daily routine, and she followed hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467482
Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?" "When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out - that's the real world," Tengo replied. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467483
But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
Tengo, IQ84 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467485
Komatsu's view is that there are always two sides to everything," Tengo said. "A good side and a not-so-bad side. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467486
Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can never escape the pressure of this water. This memory defines who you are, shapes your life, and is trying to send you to a place that has been decided for you. You can writhe all you want, but you will never be able to escape from this power
Tengo -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467487
I'm certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I'm not exactly a teacher. I write fiction, but I've never been published, so I'm not a writer yet, either." "You're nothing." Tengo nodded. "Exactly. For the moment, I'm nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467489
I hope I don't have an erection, Tengo thought. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467490
Tengo could hardly believe it
that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two people's hearts
a boy's and a girl's
could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn't seen each other for twenty years. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467491
This lady has deep feelings for Tengo, Ushikawa thought admiringly. Almost a kind of unconditional love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone else? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467492
His father said nothing. Instead, he looked straight at Tengo as if he were reading a bulletin written in a foreign language.
1Q84, Murakami -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467493
For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467494
But at some point Tengo noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of mathematics. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467495
I don't have a thing,Tengo said, except my soul. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467496
I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it," Tengo said ... "It was the one thing he was best at." "Hmm. I see," Kumi said. She pondered this. "But that might very well be the best way to live your life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467499
Tengo did not know for certain whether he wanted to be a professional novelist, nor was he sure he had the talent to write fiction. What he did know was that he could not help spending a large part of every day writing fiction. To him, writing was like breathing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467500
It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467501
Tengo made a point of asking people how old they were at the time of their first memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000467502
Tengo realized this was the first time he had ever heard anything resembling polite language from Fuka-Eri's mouth. No, it might not have been the first time, but he could not recall when he might have heard it before. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000468056
We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it's gone forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000468480
Is it better, financially, to go to the physics department than the philosophy department?" Tsukuru asked. "When it comes to their graduates not earning anything, they're about even. Unless you win the Nobel Prize or something," Haida said, flashing his usual winning smile. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000468528
Tsukuru nodded. Coming up with witty sayings about life seemed, after all, to be a trait shared by all Finns. The long winters might have something to do with it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469142
The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469733
I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469908
Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469934
Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469966
She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.
The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469972
Now all I know about her is my memories of her. And these memories fade further and further into the distance like displaced cells. Now I have no way of knowing precisely how many times she and I had sex. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000469973
Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000470844
It was a lovely uneventful spring evening. The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. When -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000471081
It was a matter of my not losing out on life. It's too easy to let yourself get ground down by those who give you shit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000472460
My arm was not what she needed, but the arm of someone else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of someone else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000472673
Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000474910
I'm alone, going in the opposite direction. We're on different tracks in more ways than one. All of a sudden the air feels thin and something heavy is bearing down on my chest. Am I really doing the right thing? The thought makes me feel helpless, isolated. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000475064
Music is my longtime friend. And I could never betray it. I listen to music while I'm writing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000475866
She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. "I need to know this," Aomame said. "That we're in the same world, seeing the same things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000476488
The three of them left the noodle shop and went to a nearby love hotel. It was on the edge of town, on a street where love hotels alternated with gravestone dealers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000477937
High school girls came bustling along, their rosy red cheeks puffing white breaths you could have written cartoon captions in. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000479371
I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000479497
There's nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don't fit the stereotype yet. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000479632
There may be a few differences in clothing and lifestyle, but there's not that much difference in what we think and do. Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers - passageways - for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000480140
A long silence descended. Long enough to walk to the end of a long, narrow room, look up something in a dictionary, and walk back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000480459
All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000482399
I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000483158
What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000484158
Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000484551
Phone calls in the dead of the night never brought good news. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000485458
For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can't see. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000487364
But then again, chance has nothing to do with it. Your two fates did not cross through mere happenstance. The two of you set foot in this world because you were meant to enter it. And now that you have entered it, like it or not, each of you will be assigned your proper role here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000487667
If you ask me, any religion that takes the end of the world as one of its central tenets is more or less bogus. In my view, the only thing that ever 'ends' is the individual. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000487904
The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000489778
Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed self-sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000491250
I was at the bottom of the sea, the pressure dense, crushing, inexorable. Dead silence strained against my eardrums. The darkness was without reprieve. No mental adjustment could make it less absolute. It was impenetrable - black painted over black painted over black. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000491496
From my own experience, when someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them. I'm generalizing, of course. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000492553
Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum
a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000494115
Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000496934
Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000497194
She came to her own private conclusion, which she tucked away in a drawer, and silently went back to her meal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000498547
A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000499823
Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000501891
There must have been a reason, but it probably wasn't a very good one if I can't even remember what it was. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000503405
Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000503741
Every person has his set routines when it comes to thinking and acting, and where there's a routine, there's a weak point. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000504951
Is that what you see in my eyes, that you know nothing about me?"
"Nothing is written in your eyes". I replied.
"It is written in my eyes and i see the reflection in yours -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000504956
You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000505432
Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000506173
A theory is a battlefield in your head. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000506592
Raindrops beat against the glass, blurring street lights alongside the road that stretch off into the distance at identical intervals as if they'd been set down to measure the earth. A -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000507014
I looked up at the sky. A mother wants to make friends with her daughter. The daughter wants a mother more than a friend. Ships passing in broad daylight. Mother has a boyfriend. A homeless, one-armed poet. Father also has a boyfriend. A gay Boy Friday. What does the daughter have? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000507114
Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000508445
The sad spreadsheet of my life that reveals how much my debts far outweigh my assets. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000510560
I know. It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore."

Excerpt From: Haruki Murakami. "Kafka on the Shore." iBooks. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000510971
There's not much you can do about time - it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don't tell me that. I'm not proud of it, but I don't have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn't feel passion? It'd be like a chef without an appetite. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000511000
They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000512892
Didn't someone once say, 'A friend to kill time is a friend sublime'?"
"That was you who said that, no?"
"Sixth sense, sharp as ever. Right you are. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000513246
It feels good to think about you when I'm warm in bed. I feel as if you're curled up there beside me, fast asleep. And I think how great it would be if it were true. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000514865
I could feel her breasts up against my stomach. I wanted a beer real bad. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000517256
Actually, I'm extremely dissatisfied with being who I am. It's nothing to do with my looks or abilities or status or any of that. It simply has to do with being me. The situation strikes me as grossly unfair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000517408
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000518548
But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000518772
Friends don't need the intervention of a third party. Friendship's a voluntary thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000519006
O Lord in Heaven, may thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000519350
What kind of world will be there tomorrow? "No one knows the answer to that," Fuka-Eri said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000520108
Never let the darkness or negativity outside affect your inner self. Just wait until morning comes and the bright light will drown out the darkness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000520191
It's not me but the world that's deranged. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000520790
No matter how empty it may be, this is still my heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000521281
I've been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It's natural. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000522357
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000522893
For the sake of argument, let's say all your choices and all your effort are destined to be a waste. You're still very much yourself and nobody else. And you're forging ahead, as yourself. So relax. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000523571
Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, Tsukuru had fallen into the bowels of death, one untold day after another, lost in a dark, stagnant void. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000524652
Whether or not the person I think of as me undergoes any essential changes, the earth never stops circling the sun at it's old speed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000525490
I love no one and am loved by no one. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000526669
The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I'm in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000526747
Most people, he muses, they're trying to escape from boredom, but I'm trying to get into the thick of boredom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000527232
Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000527593
I forgot my eraser," I told her, "so if you have an extra, could you let me borrow it?" She took her eraser, broke it in two, and gave me half. And smiled broadly. Like the saying goes, in that instant I fell in love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000527627
When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000529899
Of course there are teachers who can teach a subject, in a set order, using predetermined phrases, but there aren't many who can adjust their teaching to the abilities and tendencies of their pupils and explain things in their own individual way. Maybe hardly any at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000530558
I have no physical symptoms, but psychologically there's this burden. I've got to get rid of it somehow. Of course, when I first went back to work I was scared the same thing might happen again. It takes positive thinking to overcome fear, otherwise you'll carry around this victim mentality forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000531581
Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000531939
There are three ways you can get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she's wearing; and three, treat her to really good food ... If you do all that and still don't get the results you want, better give up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000532267
How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000533321
How much do you love me?' Midori asked.
'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000533464
The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed - everything around him felt changed, as if they had all been recast. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000533714
For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000534146
But metaphors can reduce the distance." "We're not metaphors." "I know, but metaphors eliminates what separates you and me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000536544
I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000538265
Hoshino found Oshima an appealing young man. Intelligent, well groomed, obviously from a good family. And quite kind. He's got to be gay, right? Not that Hoshino cared. To each his own, was his thinking. Some men talk with stones, and some men sleep with other men. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000540019
The tricky thing about mazes is that you don't know if you've chosen the right path until the very end. If it turns out you were wrong, it's usually too late to go back and start again. That's the problem with mazes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000542105
If you're in love with someone, can't you manage one way or another with her? Hatsumi asked after a few moments' thought. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000542399
That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000543606
In dreams lie responsibilities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000543722
Maybe you didn't want to get married, or get tied down?'
Tsukuru shook his head. 'No, I don't think that was it. I'm the sort of person who craves stability. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000546145
Strong and independent? I'm neither. I'm just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000547021
I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000548320
It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000548340
After a short breather, Reiko crushed her cigarette out and picked her guitar up again. She played "Penny Lane," "Blackbird," "Julia," "When I'm 64," "Nowhere Man," "And I Love Her," and "Hey Jude. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000549553
Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000550877
Even now, whenever I think of her, I envision a quiet Sunday morning. A gentle, clear day, just getting under way. No homework to do, just a Sunday when you could do what you wanted. She always gave me this kick-back-and-relax, Sunday-morning kind of feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000551544
Not prejudging things, listening to what's going on, keeping your ears, heart, and mind open. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000551594
You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you also should not be afraid of destroying them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000551749
Here I was, seeing you almost every week, and talking with you, and knowing that the only one in your heart was Kizuki. It hurt. It really hurt. And I think that's why I slept with girls I didn't know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000553127
I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000553611
I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000554397
I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000554838
Like a person in a storm desperately grasping at a lamppost, he clung to his daily routine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000555646
And every night I thought of you. Now that I can no longer see you, I realise how much I need you. Everything seems pointless since you left. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000555884
The strange sense of being disassembled -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000555886
I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000556208
You can't go anywhere if you resign yourself to being attacked. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000557146
With my hands on the keys, I realized how much I had liked music - and how much I hungered for it. To be able to perform music for yourself is wonderful thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000557166
A crucial aspect of the world that could only be expressed through the medium of music. His -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000557782
Stop agreeing with everything I say! It's not as if you're going to solve everything by admitting your mistakes. Whether or not you admit then or not, mistakes are mistakes."
"It's true," I said. It -was- true. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000559845
And you know what you once told me, about how people's eyes have something honest about them when they're watching a fire. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000560078
Irony deepens a person, helps them mature. It is the entrance to salvation on a higher plane, to a place where you can find a more universal kind of hope. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000560625
Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it'd lose even its imperfection. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000561486
fleas are like a bad habit - awfully hard to get rid of once you get them -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000561870
He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar, but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning. The very fact that he existed in this world would eventually be forgotten. 'Such a shame, he was so young,' people might say. Or they might not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000562433
But when it comes down to actually packing and leaving, I can't bring myself to do it. Can you see what I mean?If the town's really going to die, then the urge to stay on and see the town to its end wins out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000562550
What I'd like to be is a unique writer who's different from everybody else. I want to be a writer who tells stories unlike other writers'. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000563745
Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn't imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything - this life I was losing - was me. And I couldn't be any other self but my self. Could I? Once, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000564412
No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000565335
It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000569040
Life is frightening. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000570183
No matter how quiet and conformist a person's life seems, there's always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000571013
There has to be pain. That's the rule -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000571909
He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn't able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000572194
The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000572809
Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000573635
Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally- the way that driver beats his old horse until it dies. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realize that we are being beaten. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000574580
Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000575569
But at the same time who would ever think, "I'm an unimportant little person, and if I end up just a cog in society's system, gradually worn down until I die, hey - that's okay"? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000576776
There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000578884
Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That's what being tough is all about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000578911
Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000579172
I'm not intelligent. I'm not arrogant. I'm just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn't want to become a writer - it just happened. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000580479
I've got tons of things I don't understand about myself. We're both normal ordinary -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000581585
If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000581589
Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000581734
The important thing is to adopt a sense of always being deadly serious about protecting yourself. You can't go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at the person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000581747
You can't go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000581873
There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000583740
Aomame closed her eyes and, in a split second, reviewed the long span of years as if standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, surveying an ocean channel below. She could smell the sea. She could hear the deep sighing of the wind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000586051
I guess I don't really understand you yet,' I said. 'I'm not all that smart. It takes me a while to understand things. But if I do have time, I will come to understand you
better than anyone else in the world ever can. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000586967
That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000587013
Everyone lets their hair down here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000590563
We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000591202
I wasn't able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we'd done the buttons up wrong. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000592186
This layers, like some kind of transparent sponge kind of thing, stands there between Eri Asai and me, and the words that come out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens, the sponge sucks almost all the nutrients right out of them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000594153
I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else.I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000596879
She liked the fact that he had not chosen Chivas Regal or some sophisticated single malt. It was her personal view that people who are overly choosy about the drinks they order in a bar tend to be sexually bland. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000597223
No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000598095
I mean, you're such a supernormal guy, but you do such unnormal things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000598512
Age certainly hadn't conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russian writers have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000598714
There's no reason why everyone has to listen to records in hi-fi. Having the violins on the left and the bass on the right doesn't make the music more profound. It's just a more complex way of stimulating a bored imagination. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000599147
Where there's an entrance, there's got to be an exit. Most things work that way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000599996
Tsukuru visited railroad stations like other people enjoy attending concerts, watching movies, dancing in clubs, watching sports, and window shopping. When he was at loose ends, with nothing to do, he headed to a station. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000600305
Never really loved by anyone, never seeming really to love anyone either -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000602164
It was just the same old familiar moon. The one and only satellite that has faithfully circled the earth, at the same speed, from before human memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000603395
Experience has taught me this: you've done everything you needed to do, and there's no sense in rehashing it. All you can do now is wait for the race. And what instinct has taught me is one thing only: use your imagination. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000603405
Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000604225
Without a true self, a person can not go on living. It is like the ground we stand on. Without the ground, we can build nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000605761
Rock and roll was my favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shinamoto's brand of classical music. This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I loved it because she was a part of that world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000605919
Men who wield great violence at home against their wives and children are invariably people of weak character. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000607837
Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000608002
What few sounds there were echoed with special clarity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000608950
I'm struck by how pitiful and pointless this little container called me is, what a lame, shabby being I am. I feel like everything I've ever done in life has been a total waste. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000610891
You want to know why you felt that way about me even though you didn't love me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000611193
Cause and effect are linked that way in a twisted form. You can pile up all the worlds you like and the twisting will never be undone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000611209
Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas - none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bare it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000611608
I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don't work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000612496
The next thing I knew, the season of politics was over. Like a drooping flag on a windless day, the gigantic shock waves that had convulsed society for a time were swallowed up by a colorless, mundane workaday world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000612498
He did not have the sort of looks suited for stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a coup of yogurt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000612503
What they were after wasn't further complexification or sophistication of existing methods, but unprecedented technology. Wasn't the kind of thinkin' you get from workaday university lab scholars, publish-or-perishin' and countin' their pay. The truly original scientist is a free individual. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000614840
When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000615609
Once you're lost, you panic. You're in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, 'cause when you get in the mood all you can think about is what's right under your nose - that's sex, all right. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000619442
Like a button on a shirt buttoned wrong, every attempt to correct things led to yet another fine
not to say elegant
mess. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000622414
Menopause: it had to be the gods' ironic warning to (or just plain nasty trick on) humanity for having artificially extended the life span, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000622852
Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000622907
This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000623932
I've thought a lot about you in that time. The more I've thought, the more I've come to feel that I was unfair to you. I probably should have been a better, fairer person when it came to the way I treated you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000624191
On the day of the race, as I run those very streets, will I be able to fully enjoy this autumn in New York? Or will I be too preoccupied? I won't know until I actually start running. If there's one hard and fast rule about marathons, it's that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000625099
Aren't you afraid of dying?
Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000627177
Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000627636
With jealousy, a parasite takes root in your heart. It becomes a cancer that eats away at your soul. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000628111
Nobody chooses to evolve. It's like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what's happening until they hit, then it's too late. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000630547
There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000630693
No, her secret was too weighty and dark to reveal to anyone - she had to bear it alone. - "I had to keep breaking into his house," Scheherazade said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000631280
So just because I don't exist in the sheep man's world, it doesn't mean that I don't exist at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000631762
I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000631869
Most definitely the real world, Komatsu said, and he rubbed his inner forearm. Pale veins rose to the surface. They were not very healthy-looking blood vessels - blood vessels damaged by years of drinking, smoking, an unhealthy lifestyle, and various literary intrigues. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000632244
If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000632255
The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000636367
I asked if he thought the ratio of good ones to scum was higher or lower than in society at large.
"It's the same," he said. "Of course." It was the same everywhere, he added: an immutable law. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000636369
I'm not going to die with you just because you made lunch for me. Of course, if it had been dinner... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000636880
I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000638615
We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000639313
My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000639743
You get right down to it, writing is no means to self-help. It's scarcely a passing attempt at self-help. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000640237
Sometimes our memory betray us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000640673
But even if he had dreamed, even if dreamlike images arose from the edges of his mind, they would have nowhere to perch on the slippery slopes of his consciousness, instead quickly sliding off, down into the void. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000641098
The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000641481
He was up to his neck in it. He was breathing the air of its world, adapting to its gravity. The story's essence had permeated every part of him, to the walls of his viscera. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000641573
As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000642743
The chair was a simple Scandinavian design of chrome and white leather. Beautiful, clean, and silent, with not an ounce of warmth, like a fine rain falling under the midnight sun. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000642791
Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000643786
About how it feels to be alone and the depth of the darkness surrounding me. Darkness as pitch black as the night of the new moon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000644486
Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000644599
The world existed in two states, raining and non-raining, and there should be a line of demarcation between the two. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000645163
She hadn't been hurt in any real way, had she? No one had treated her badly. I must just be overly sensitive to things, she convinced herself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000646573
Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge," Aomame said.
"Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire's budget deficits. It has no moral significance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000647236
But the pain I felt was excruciating. It was as if my life had ended. Here I was in my early twenties and the best part of my life was over. Do you see how terrible that would be? I had suc potential, then woke up one day and it had gone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000651121
I was ready to get the hell off the mountain, but somehow that offered no satisfaction. I had gotten in too deep. I would have been so easy if only I could have cried. But crying wasn't an option, because I felt that far ahead of me there was something really worth crying about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000651633
Aomame imagined the carefree winds sweeping across the plains of Bohemia and thought about the vicissitudes of history. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000652724
Maybe when people take their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000654865
What do we talk about? Just ordinary things. What happened today, or books we've read, or tomorrow's weather, you know. Don't tell me you're wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like 'It'll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000656193
Learning another language is like becoming another person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000659392
I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000659541
She was probably too cool, too self-possessed. Some of our classmates must have thought her cold and haughty. But I detected something else- something warm and fragile just below the surface. Something very much like a child playing hide-and-seek, hidden deep within her, yet hoping to be found. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000659602
I felt better for having met her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000659640
Exhaustion pays no mind to age or beauty. Like rain and earthquakes and hail and floods. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000659826
When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000661504
All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000661708
particles of silence floated about the room -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000661982
And then, inside me, the axis of time gave one great heave. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000662326
Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000662892
I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000663168
[H]e felt as if he were crossing a deserted bridge that went on and on forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000663406
I knew for a certain that if I had to do it all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000663598
He didn't seem to have suffered. His face looked very peaceful. It was like - a windless day at the end of autumn, when a single leaf falls from a tree. But maybe that's not a good way to put it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000668522
Almost anyone who saw the guy would, to a greater or lesser degree, feel their spirits dampen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000668689
Don't you see any contradiction between being a Christian and being the chauffeur for a major right-wing figure? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000669340
My point is: in this whole wide world the only person you can depend on is you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000669351
From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000669992
Were you happy?" "If you look at things from a distance," I said as I swallowed some lobster, "most anything looks beautiful. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000671111
I always felt as if I'd been handed a cardboard box crammed full of monkeys. I'd take the monkeys out of the box one at a time, carefully brush off the dust, give them a pat on the bottom, and send them scurrying off into the fields. I never knew where they went from there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000671677
Properly speaking, should any individual ever have exact, clear knowledge of his own core consciousness?"
"I wouldn't know," I said.
"Nor would we," said the scientists. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000675319
A rubber plant is just about the ideal family. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000675387
Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart. [On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning ] -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000675393
It's simple. If there's no station, no trains will stop there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000677262
This life is nothing but a short, painful dream. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000677714
Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000681654
I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000682090
I can't afford to take responsibilities for others' lives. It's all I can do to bear the weight of my own life and my own loneliness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000682739
I try not to think about anything special while running. As a matter of fact, I usually run with my mind empty. However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime. That might become an idea that can help me with my writing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000683320
The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000683754
Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000684504
He found it increasingly difficult to accept the strict codes of the sect that clashed with ordinary values. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000685259
People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000685267
I don't know, I don't feel right unless I've got the sea and mountains nearby. People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000685571
Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000686038
There was much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000686183
Reiko moved on to the Beatles, playing "Norwegian Wood," "Yesterday," "Michelle," and "Something." She sang and played "Here Comes the Sun," then played "The Fool on the Hill." I laid seven matches in a row. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000686296
I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000688058
Am I happy? All I can say is I guess so. That's pretty much the way it is with dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000688399
Nothing like that. it had more to do with his face. which, although presentable, gave me the feeling that his every expression had been thrown together on the spur of the moment. like mismatched dishes set out in make-do fashion on a party table. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000689395
It feels like somehow our hearts have become intertwined. Like when she feels something, my heart moves in tandem. Like we're two boats tied together with rope. Even if you want to cut the rope, there's no knife sharp enough to do it. Later -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000690035
Those people digging around in the refrigerator at 3am, those are the only people I can write for.
And that, is me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000691105
Someday you'll find the right person, Mari, and you'll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That's what I think. So don't settle for anything less. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000691183
If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000691517
I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000692326
Time does not expand."
"But time is actually expanding, isn't it? You yourself said that time adds up."
"That's only because time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesn't change. It's only that you can see more movies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693023
So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693699
Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693700
It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693702
Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693704
I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693706
I also happened to identify with Julien Sorel. Sorel's basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000693709
Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000695462
Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000696777
But Nakata wasn't afraid of the darkness or how deep it was. And why should he be? That bottomless world of darkness, that weighty silence and chaos, was an old friend, a part of him already. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000697019
To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to escape from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000697536
I don't know
maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000697890
I'm kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I'm always hot. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000698258
When I was 15, I thought there had to be a place like that in the world. I was sure that somewhere I'd run across the entrance that would take me to that other world." I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000698410
You know, the usual story. Once upon a time I was playing my harp by a spring when a fairy appeared out of nowhere, handed me a Beretta Model 92, and told me to shoot the white rabbit over there for target practice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000698467
There is another capital beneath the waves, She plunged ten thousand fathoms beneath the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000698881
Most people, when they go around not speaking clearly, somewhere in their unconscious they're asking for trouble. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000699227
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000699850
Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000701300
But you're such a nice guy,' she said, sounding like she'd just stepped fresh out of a bath. 'At least I think so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000702830
I don't think it's right that I'm part of the problem. I can't be part of the solution if I'm part of the problem -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000703007
I was alive in the past, and I'm alive now, sitting here talking to you. But what you see here isn't really me. This is just a shadow of who I was. You are really living. But I'm not. Even these words I'm saying right now sound empty, like an echo. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000703393
There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't. And time passing is one thing that can't be redone. Come this far, and you can't go back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000705187
It was such a radiant smile, without a trace of shadow, that I couldn't help smiling myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000705316
I don't want to do that," Aomame said. "What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus." "Destiny. A chance encounter." "More or less," Aomame said, taking a sip of wine. "That's when I'll open up -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000706232
Team sports aren't my thing. I find it easier to pick something up if I can do it at my own speed. And you don't need a partner to go running, you don't need a particular place, like in tennis, just a pair of trainers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000707028
It's strange, isn't it? No matter how quiet and conformist a person's life seems, there's always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000707050
It's a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000707378
You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000709061
People have to get out sometimes - have something good to eat, have some drinks, belt out some songs, talk about nothing in particular. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000710672
There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000711272
There are always far more people in the world who make things worse, rather than help out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000711974
I miss you something awful sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000712289
I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000712873
Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000716471
At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000716592
In the course of this one day, several things have taken a decisive step forward. The gears have turned forward with a click. And gears that have turned forward never turn back. That is one of the world's rules. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000720682
I forget my name," the cat said. "I had one, I know I did, but somewhere along the line I didn't need it anymore. So it's slipped my mind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000720741
When one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things capture one's attention, but they are often a little more than trivia. The more one tires to see into the distance, the more generalized things become. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000721089
The mask possesses equal levels of sorcery and functionality. It has been both handed down from ancient times with darkness and sent back from the future with light. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000723433
They knew the difference between thoroughness and overkill. It was like Jay Gatsby's library: the books were real, but the pages were uncut. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000724262
When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out - that's the real world, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000725249
Your "scared" and my "scared" are two different things.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' she asked.
'As you get older, you don't recover from things so easy.'
'As you get older, you also get tired?'
'Yeah,' I said, 'you get tired. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000725360
It must be though on you not being able to read, but it's not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That's what you gotta focus on - your strengths. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000726877
No man is capable enough to live forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000727463
They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000728879
You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you're living a different kind of life there. In a world that's inside you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000729372
Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000729637
Everything in life is a metaphor. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000730254
I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000730914
We're on the same wavelength. We're connected that way, even if I'm away from her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000732444
It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000732595
Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It'll only hold so much water and no more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000733278
Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000733816
The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000733824
If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000734563
A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made. It had always been there inside him. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000734663
Can you believe it? Here's a 15-year-old girl pinching pennies to buy strainers and whetstones and tempura pots when all the girls in school are getting huge allowances and buying beautiful dresses and shoes. Don't you feel sorry for me? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000734720
I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000734834
I'm the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she's the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000735124
She raised her eyes from the table and put the question to him as if the thought had just struck her, but it had obviously not just struck her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000738721
I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.
Its only confusing if you believe it has to make sense. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000739626
Since living meant accumulating sin, I thought dying would be much better for the world. These -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000740199
The morning light pours down through the tall trees onto the open space in front of the cabin, sunbeams everywhere and mist floating like freshly minted souls. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000740210
sunbeams everywhere and mist floating like freshly minted -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000740913
Like flowers scattered in a storm, a man's life is a long farewell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000741134
Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000741171
There is some risk, of course. But risk is the spice of life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000741370
People start aging from early, very early, on. Gradually it spreads over their entire body like a stain that cannot be wiped away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000743498
Consistency and an established worldview were excess baggage in the intellectual mobile warfare that flared up in the mass media's tiny time segments, and it was his great advantage to be free of such things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000746086
The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at the opposite ends of spectrum. They don't stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000746507
That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000746619
It's 'cause I hated the place so much. I wasn't going to let it beat me. I figured, let it get me once and I'd be finished. I was scared I'd just keep slipping down and down. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000747165
There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000748965
I'm going to take you out of here ... I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000749212
May I give you a piece of advise? ... Don't feel sorry for yourself, only arseholes do that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000750508
Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000754423
Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000756148
My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless
a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000756157
If I do tell you the story, the two of us will always share it. And I don't know if that's the right thing to do. if I lift open the lid now, you'll be implicated. Is that what you want? You really want to know something I've sacrificed so much trying to forget? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000756538
I don't know how to put it, but I just can't get it through my head that here and now is really here and now. Or that I am really me. It doesn't quite hit home. It's always this way. Only much later on does it ever come together. For the last ten years, it's been like this. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000757233
You can't keep counting forever -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000758531
Between us, I sensed a different vibe than the last time we'd met, something in the atmosphere was a little off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000759845
I'm only a girl with metaphysical soles. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000759949
And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000760137
But this is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings. but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it. All by yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000760395
My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000760744
When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000760977
Everybody's gotta die sometime. But until then we've still got fifty-some odd years to go, and a lot to think about while we're living those fifty years, and I'll just come right out and say it: that's even more tiring than living five thousand years thinking about nothing. Don't you think? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000762083
When he woke up the next day, the world was still there, and things were already moving forward, like the great karmic wheel of Indian mythology that kills every living thing in its path. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000762404
So they won't hear me," Fuka-Eri said quietly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000762678
Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000764064
Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000764398
A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty
like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000764488
I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000765020
John Dowland's instrumental piece "Lachrimae -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000765134
Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can't buy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000765661
Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000766165
Strangely transparent, they seemed like windows to a world beyond, but however long I peered into there depths, there was nothing I could see. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000766833
The girl behind the counter was prim, but bad at tying ribbons. Inexcusable. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000771040
You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost. Mark my words: as soon as the bones mend, you will forget about the fracture. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000772288
Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000772704
The more you think about illusions, the more they'll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000773348
Everything was bathed in the white, unreal light of the moon, the yard like the wet bottom of a sea from which the water has just been suddenly removed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000774110
Her pubic hair grew like a patch of grass that had been trampled by a passing army. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000774862
Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000775332
I knew it would never happen again. I knew this was something that would come to me once, and leave, and never come back. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I had never felt anything like it before, and I've never felt anything like it since. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000775430
She preferred coffee as hot and strong as a devil at midnight -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000778199
Because, in the final analysis, the language we speak constitutes who we are as people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000781709
Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000782737
What I've written here is a message to myself. I toss it into the air
like a boomerang. It slices through the dark, lays the little soul of
some poor kangaroo out cold, and finally comes back to me.
But the boomerang that returns is not the same one I threw.
Boomerang, boomerang. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000783375
Somewhere in his body
perhaps in the marrow of his bones
he would continue to feel her absence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000783662
You like to write. I value that in you. It's the single most important quality for somebody who wants to be a writer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000784217
There's something about those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that can't be explained, no matter how hard you try. They're what the dead person has to take with him to his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000785724
I'm not saying that kinda life's bad. But I wonder, y'know, if life should really be that easy, that comfortable. It might be better to go our separate ways for a while, and if we find out that we really can't get along without each other, then we get back together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000786679
No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000786821
I, too, remember that feeling. You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000787705
To relinquish yourself carries no shame. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000788153
To understand something and to put that something into a form that you can see with your own eyes are two completely different things. If you could manage to do both equally well, living would be a lot simpler (from Honey Pie) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000788255
I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final throb of a soul's dying embers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000789078
To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That's my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000789741
If you don't know what you're looking for, it's not easy to look for it." Erika -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000790096
But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000791192
I know exactly what I'm doing, but I just can't stop. That's my greatest weakness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000795906
Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at her cerebrum-- the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000796314
What more could you want if you were that smart and that beautiful? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000796832
You know what I like best about porn cinemas?"
"I couldn't begin to guess."
"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this "Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "I love that "Gulp!' It's so sweet! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000798611
He could not recall ever going anywhere with his father, from the time he was small until he was grown up, or even having a friendly talk, just the two of them. His -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000798937
They both loved piano music and were convinced that Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 was the absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm Backhaus's unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca set the interpretive standard. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000799575
If a person remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but it's like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It's hard to go back to the original shape. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000800867
I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. so when I do get turned on, I don't trust it, I have to investigate the source. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000801656
I study the chessboard and concede defeat.
"You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000801879
Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000801999
In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000802856
All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000803368
It's gone too far: She's out there," I repeat in my head. Very plain, and without reality. I can't grasp the context. Cause has effect by the tail and is about to swallow it whole. I get up and go to the kitchen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000803476
It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000803748
He never had a lot to say, but he had his definite tastes and opinions. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000804164
If you need me, use me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000804398
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000804563
People have to pay a price for the gifts they are given -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000805575
Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle, running across someone to whom you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been mistake to label this "love". It was more like total empathy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000805758
You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000807801
It was hard to accept that she had almost no feelings, maybe
none at all, for me as a man. This hurt so bad at times it felt like
someone was gouging out my guts with a knife. Still, the time I
spent with her was more precious than anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000809983
I add things, cross them off, then add a whole other bunch and cross them off, too. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000811423
Inally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000812904
I don't know a whole lot about symbolism. There seems to me to be a potential danger in symbolism. I feel more comfortable with metaphors and similes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000813232
It's hard to breathe, and I close my eyes. There's a hard lump of air in my chest, like I've swallowed a raincloud whole. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000813241
A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000813400
The movie creaked along, obvious and mediocre plot. Mediocre script, mediocre music. They ought to have sealed the thing in a time capsule and marked "Late 20th Century Mediocrity" and buried it somewhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000813623
Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that's why. They're nice and creamy. And sort of grainy at the same time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000816894
That's something you'll have to decide for yourself.. I think you have a right to live however you want. Whether you're fifteen or fifty-one, what does it matter? But unfortunately society doesn't agree.
~Oshima, page 198 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000816969
You're really cute, Midori," I corrected myself.
"What do you mean really cute?"
"So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000817849
I think it means that what can be seen by anybody isn't all that important ... I guess. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000818000
You know how to put pretty words on a page, but you don't know shit about a woman's feelings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000820052
Well, Mr Katagiri, I have not been frogging all these years for nothing. I keep my eye on the important things in life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000820174
The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000821127
I could never tell what was going on inside the pretty heads of the girls that Naoko brought along, and they probably couldn't understand me, either. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000821209
In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000821224
The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000821750
When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it. I didn't want to take it on, so I avoided facing up to it. Which is why my heart is so empty now. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000822279
Huge organisations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, have too many stupid people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000826455
Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000827545
Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000828636
The task of writing consists primarily in recognizing the distance between oneself and the things around one. It is not sensitivity one needs, but a yardstick. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000831025
I don't think most people would like my personality. There might be a few
very few, I would imagine- who are impressed by it, but rarely would anyone like it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000831741
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 incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that i can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000832349
Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000832371
The thought of sharing a jar with ten thousand caterpillars for three days sent a chill up my spine. Yet the warmth of the fresh doughnuts in my belly and the girl's kiss on my cheek had dispelled all my fears. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000832739
George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I'm 100 percent fiction writer ... I don't want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don't state my political messages to anybody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000835850
What am I always so tense about? Why this desperate struggle just to survive? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000836169
Time came slowly and passed slowly, so leisurely that at times he could swear it had stealthily doubled back on itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000837898
History cannot be erased or altered.Because that would mean killing yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000839743
I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000840180
It's good when food tastes good, it's kind of like proof you're alive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000841933
The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000845326
Please remember: things are not what they seem. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000845396
Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000845661
Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000847058
Narratives have the same power, I think. Some readers of my novels ask me, "Why do you understand me?". That's a huge pleasure of mine because it means that readers and I can make our narratives relative. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000847202
Like dark, soft water, sadness took over Aomame's heart, soundlessly, and with no warning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000847206
Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark
bottom of a volcanic lake. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000847238
Her skin retained a faint warmth, but it was already fading away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000848337
Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands (Salon, 20 February 2009). -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000848847
Dreams are things from the past. They aren't from the future. That wasn't you imprisoned there. You imprison your dreams. You understand?
Yeah, I'd say. But I wasn't convinced. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000851408
Mediocrity's like a spot on a shirt - it never comes off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000853236
The pistol against her back was as hard and cold as death, and the feeling soothed her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000853952
It is a lonely life sometimes, like throwing a stone into the deep darkness. It might hit something, but you can't see it. The only thing you can do is to guess, and to believe. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000854558
I've never seen a German shepherd that liked spinach before.'
'She doesn't know she's a dog.'
'What does she think she is?'
'Well, she seems to think she's a special being that transcends classification.'
'Superdog?'
'Maybe so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000854739
Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000854744
Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000855335
But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000855414
People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000856031
No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000856224
The world was big and full of weird things and strange people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000856933
I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is big
enough for different values to coexist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000857531
Whether you take a doughnut hole as blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit. Sitting -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000858480
No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000859349
Humans are immortal in their thought. Though strictly speakin', not immortal, but endlessly, asymptotically close to immortal. That's eternal life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000859588
We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000861016
I don't know, I feel like this isn't the real world. The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000863333
There are - how do you say - things in this world our philosophy cannot account for. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000864769
What's important is being attentive. Staying calm, being alert to things around you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000867007
Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching truth, I sensed, however vaguely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000869282
Tsukuru's mind grew still and tranquil. A quiet feeling, like a frozen tree on a windless winter night. But there was little pain mixed in. Over the years Tsukuru had grown used to this mental image, so much so that it no longer brought him any particular pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000869360
You have let something out of the bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be awfully dangerous -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000870765
I can't find the image, I said to myself. I'm thirty, I'm standing still, and I can't find the image. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000870922
But as often is the case with short people - he never grew past five foot three - once he made up his mind about something, no matter how trivial it might be, he never backed down. And he was bothered by illogical rules and by teachers who couldn't meet his exacting -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000872488
Then back to the stage, and the acting. The bright lights, the rehearsed lines. The applause, the falling curtain. Leaving who one was for a brief time, then returning. But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000872797
She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000873642
If she did experience sex
or something close to it
in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000873928
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000873968
You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don't have to think about money. The best thing you can buy with money is freedom, time. I don't know how much I earn a year. I have no idea. I don't know how much I pay in taxes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000874731
Tolstoy's famous line, all happiness is alike, but each pain is painful in its own way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000875714
He was already thirty, but yet to have a sense of himself as an adult. It just felt to him like he had spent thirty years in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000876591
If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000877359
I'm not very good at putting my feelings into words. That's why people misunderstand me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000877650
It was Yuki. What was I up to? My response: Chewing on a stalk of celery and having a beer. Hers: Yuck. Mine: It's not so bad. She wasn't old enough to know things could be a lot worse. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000877853
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000879211
If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000880249
No, I don't want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don't like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself as much on the lending side as I can. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000882180
They use a training manual instead of sacred scriptures, with promotion and a high salary as their equivalent of enlightenment and paradise. A new religion for a pragmatic age. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000882380
Once a guy starts using a wig, he has to keep using one. It's, like, his fate. That's why wig makers make such huge profits. I hate to say it, but they're like drug dealers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000883102
People are in constant motion, never stationary. No one knows what will happen next. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000883203
It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000883340
There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000883471
It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can't catch her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000883761
You keep floudering and never get anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000884558
But that reality was like nothing I'd ever seen before: a reality that didn't seem to fit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000884619
The morning sun was casting its first rays against the leaves of the trees. The sheep man had disappeared without a word to me. Just as the morning dew had evaporated. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000885299
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000886306
There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you disgusted with yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000887519
It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000888975
To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000889003
I did nothing wrong. All I did was break the law. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000889405
Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000889879
The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of my lungs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000890642
If you live in Boston, Samuel Adams draft beer (Summer Ale) and Dunkin' Donuts are essentials of life. But I discovered to my delight that even these indulgences can be offset by persistent exercise. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000891889
Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000891977
He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000892439
The term "spirit projection" sprang to mind. Are you familiar with it? Japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body and goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000892672
Start making excuses and there's no end to it. I can't live that kind of life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000892799
Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000894794
He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000897383
Reality recedes until you can't tell who's sane and who's
not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000898481
It feels as though these things happened just yesterday. Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely they hurt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000899438
But thing in the past are like plate that's shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000899760
Miu let age naturally rise to the surface, accepted it for what it was, and made her peace with it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000903403
Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it's like. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000904015
Throwing up was no big deal. It was a lot less painful than hemorrhoids or tooth decay, and more refined than diarrhea -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000905329
Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000905644
worms and bugs. They climbed up the -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000906545
The monotonous mechanical drone is swallowed up in the silence of the room, like a vivid dream ripped out by the hand of nothingness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000907062
The cook hates the waiter, and they both hate the customer -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000907280
Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000909881
An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind ... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000910008
I have always liked running, so it wasn't particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000911971
Somewhere, we were struck by lightning. But not the kind of lightning you can see or hear. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000913214
There's no longer any place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, don't you think? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000913283
Waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in an advanced capitalist society -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000914722
People change,' Sara said.
'True enough,' Tsukuru said. 'People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us knew anything substantial about the other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000915789
Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000916269
He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course - the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000916325
Responsibility for it lies in the intolerance that can take over a person's mind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000916713
Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000917417
I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so- I don't know- lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space. With no idea where I'm headed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000917437
And her sleep was too long and deep for that:so deep that she left her normal reality behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000919117
Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all work the same way. Like women. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000919536
Reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. All you have to do is open a newspaper on any given day to weigh the good news versus the bad news, and you'll see what I mean. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000920260
Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000920441
And each time he finished a sentence, there was a tiny but meaningful lump of silence left behind. This lump floated there, enclosed in the car's restricted space like an imaginary miniature cloud, giving Aomame a strangely unsettled feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000920442
I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000921105
I haven't danced like this in ages. I don't know, when you move your body, it's kind of like your spirit gets liberated."
"Your spirit is always liberated, I'd say. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000922142
I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000922244
I bet the reason people are afraid of going bald is because it makes them think of the end of life. I mean, when your hair starts to thin, it must feel as if your life is being worn away ... as if you've taken a giant step in the direction of death, the last Big Consumption. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000922527
He was the type of man who had his own sense of logic and reached his own conclusions without regard to the opinions of others. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000923089
Oh no, I
thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling
around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be 20 years
old -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000923635
Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000926080
There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000928027
My parents walked around me on tiptoe, afraid of hurting me. But I knew how disappointed they were. All of a sudden the daughter they had been so proud of was a returnee from a mental hospital. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000928089
The sky was painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably absorbed the sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of things. Perceptions, for example. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000930556
As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don't necessarily write down what I'm thinking; it's just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000930832
I think certain types of processes don't allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform - or perhaps distort - yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000931481
There is no need for me to close my eyes, of course, down here in the darkness, but I do it anyway. Closing the eyes has its own significance, in darkness or otherwise. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000931521
That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000931535
We worked so hard, so hard, building our world one brick at a time. And when it fell apart, it happened just like that. Everything was gone before you knew it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000932843
A golf course can be a very risky place in the early evening for those who aren't aware of the dangers. Who knows when a golf ball might come flying out of nowhere? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000934943
Ships passing in broad daylight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000935093
suffering is a misunderstood pain -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000935708
Or more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountain and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000936315
Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000936814
The shrill witch-hunter voices of the showbiz correspondents would bring up every last bit left in your stomach from the night before -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000937037
I had been given a wonderful opportunity to be a novelist - a chance you just don't get every day. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000937821
The quiet, melancholy music gradually gave shape to the undefined sadness enveloping his heart, as if countless microscopic bits of pollen adhered to an invisible being concealed in the air, ultimately revealing, slowly and silently it's shape. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000938675
When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you're worth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000939844
People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000940550
The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000940779
We live in an advanced capitalist society, after all. Waste is the name of the game, its greatest virtue. Politicians call it "refinements in domestic consumption." I call it meaningless waste. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000941402
But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000941585
But utopias don't exist, of course, anywhere in any world. Like alchemy or perpetual motion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000941716
Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart." The -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000941772
You keep looking at the sea and you start to miss being with people; you stay around people all the time and you just want to go look at the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000942758
She smiles faintly, and it continues to hover around her lips. This puts me in mind of how refreshing water looks after someone's sprinkled it in a tiny hollow outside on a summer day. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000942772
Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000942906
I was enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000942940
Has your father ever gone to prison?" She shakes her head. "I don't think so." "Your mother?" "I don't think so." "You're lucky. You should be grateful that's never been a part of your life." Takahashi smiles. "I don't suppose you know that." "Never thought about it." "Most people don't. I do." Mari -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000943524
people wage war? Why do hundreds of thousands, even millions of people group together and try to annihilate each other? Do people start wars out of anger? Or fear? Or are anger and fear just two aspects of the same spirit? I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000944688
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000944728
That's another one of our rules. Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000945498
Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000945746
It means leaving behind your physical body. Leaving the cage of your physical flesh, breaking free of the chains, and letting pure logic soar. Giving a natural life to logic. That's the core of free thought. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000946384
I'll never forget you," I said. "I could never forget you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000946533
Soft and silent as a new moon, a smile drifted across her face. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000947930
Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000948531
He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled "Pending" and postponed any further consideration. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000948545
I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000948799
I basically have nothing to offer to others. If you think about it, I don't even have anything to offer myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000952123
Tsukuru couldn't fathom what this substance was. He couldn't accept or reject it. It merely settled on his body as a shadowy swarm, laying an ample amount of shadowy eggs. Then darkness would withdraw and twilight would return, bringing with it the birds, who once again slashed away at his body. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000952418
My heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass
but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000953141
People have lost track of me before. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000956411
The song is over. But the melody lingers on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000957039
Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn't care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get back my stolen memories and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to claim my whole self. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000957292
Tell me I can relax now because I've done enough to last a lifetime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000958994
I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000959502
But pure, unadulterated feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth - firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000959552
People who's freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don't want to live like that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000960012
A world full of geniuses would have significant problems. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000961895
From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000964112
All these inexplicable events that have occurred in my life so far ... it's as though they were all ingeniously programmed from the start of bringing me here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000964497
I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000964601
In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000967644
Force yourself to explain it and you create lies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000967948
I turned to run, but I didn't actually take a step, even though I wanted to. That wasn't the way I was raised. My mother taught me that if you knock on a door, you have to wait there until someone answers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000968565
The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000969623
I went to the kiosk and bought ten bags of popcorn. I scattered nine on the ground for the pigeons, and sat on a bench to eat the last bag myself. Enough pigeons descended upon the popcorn for a remake of the October Revolution. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000969905
As long as an individual's alive, he will undergo experience in some form or other, and those experiences are stored up instant by instant. To stop experiencin' is to die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000970180
So once you're dead there's just nothing?
Mari: Basically ...
Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000970185
Not that running away's going to solve everything. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000970672
Eventually she tires of directing her speech outwards and closes her mouth in apparent resignation. A new silence comes to overlay the silence that is already there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000972888
The world follows its own course. Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000973354
The right words always seemed to come too late. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000973372
Memory works in different ways for everybody. Different capacities, different directions, too. Sometimes memory helps you think, sometimes it impedes. Doesn't mean it's good or bad. Probably means it's no big deal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000973672
Beside the road cows are lazily chewing grass. They show zero interest in the runners. They're too busy eating grass to care about all these whimsical people and their nonsensical activities. And for their part the runners don't have the leisure to pay attention to what the cows are up to, either. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000975087
With the advent of winter, her eyes seemed to take on a greater transparency, a transparency that lead nowhere. Occassionally, for no particular reason, Naoko would gaze into my eyes as if searching for something. Each time I was filled with odd sensations of lonliness and inadequecy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000975451
I'm kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn't suit me. I'm more of a side dish
cole slaw or French fries or a Wham! backup singer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000975759
Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000978041
My mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already changed into something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000979916
There's no such thing as absolutes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000980421
It's just that the chaos has changed shape. The giraffe and the bear have traded hats, and the bear's switched scarves with the zebra. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000980475
It was a strange feeling, like touching a void. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000980539
I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000981446
No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000981540
Mr. Kino, you're not the type who would willingly do something wrong. I know that very well. But there are times in this world when it's not enough just not to do the wrong thing. Some people use that blank space as a kind of loophole. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000981605
Genius doesn't specialize; genius is reason in itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000981873
I felt alone, but not especially lonely. I guess I just took that for granted. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000982457
As long as possible, I would really like to complete one marathon per year. Though my time has been slowing down as I get older, it has become a very important part of my life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000983368
Why do you read books?" he asked. "Why do you drink beer?" I replied without glancing in his direction, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000984413
He knew how to use the kind of logic that moved the great majority. Nor did it even have to be logic: it had only to appear so, as long as it aroused the feelings of the masses. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000985668
You went back to Tokyo just about the time the autumn weather was deepening, so for a time I couldn't tell whether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of the season. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000986735
Most people, they're trying to escape from boredom, but I'm trying to get into the thick of boredom. That's why I'm not complaining when I say my life is boring. It was enough to make my wife bail out, though. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000990904
Sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000991574
As the years passed the ugly boy grew up into an ugly youth, and before he knew it, into an ugly middle-aged man. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000991717
I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000992601
I'm confused. Really confused. And it's a lot deeper than you think. Deeper ... darker ... colder. But tell me something. How could you have slept with me that time? How could you have done such a thing? Why didn't you just leave me alone? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000994843
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000998877
Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000999122
She picked up the ballpoint pen lying on the table, and played with it for a few seconds, but then she looked at the clock again. It had done its job: in the five minutes since her last look, it had advanced five minutes' worth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 000999441
Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is meaningless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001000791
I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001002229
Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001002453
One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001002580
Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001002896
The world isn't that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It's people who are turned upside down. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001004152
They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn't the other way around - the thing gets more and more like its name. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001004644
Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001004704
What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001007265
If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001007510
To a greater or lesser extent, everybody's always being ordered and threatened and pushed around. There may not be anything better we could hope for. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001008472
Urging others to read F. Scott Fitzgerald, if not a reactionary act, was not something one could do in 1968. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001008760
There's no such thing as a perfect piece of writing. Just as there's no such thing as perfect despair. So -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001011006
I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It's like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I'll finish it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001012443
It
was all so complicated, like something out of an existential
play. Everything hit a dead end there, no alternatives left. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001012488
Cops, Hoshino concluded, not for the first time in his life, are just gangsters who get paid by the state. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001014554
Nakata nodded That's right. Pancakes are one of Nakata's favorites. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001015807
Where there's guts, there's curiosity, and where there's curiosity, there's guts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001016339
It's getting late. If you're sleepy I can finish this later. No, it's fine, Tsukuru said. I'm not sleepy. In fact, he'd gotten his second wind, and wanted to hear the rest of the story. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001016411
I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain, it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001018765
Richie Beirach Trio -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001019121
Girls have periods and boys jerk off. Everybody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001019620
Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001019622
Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren't. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001020577
But decent motives don't always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood." ~the dowager -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001021964
Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001023455
Hey, Mr. Nakata. Gramps. Fire! Flood! Earthquake! Revolution! Godzilla's on the loose! Get up! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001027538
If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001028572
She would go to bed at ten, read a few pages in her book, and fall asleep. Aomame had never had trouble falling asleep. As she read, she would get sleepy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001030860
Tisn't any need for you't'know. Even without you knowin', you function as yourself. That's your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored 'elephant graveyard' inside us. Outer space aside, this is truly humanity's last terra incognita -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001031877
When a vacuum forms, someting has to come along to fill it. Because that's what everybody does. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001032166
From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001033228
It was probably Chekhov who said that the novelist is not someone who answers questions but someone who asks them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001033749
Whenever she came across lines she liked, she'd mark them in pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001033786
I'm not doing anything that is going to destroy my. Stillm there is something quiet left behind. Like sediment in a bottle of wine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001034487
It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not read friendship. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001034703
Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001035670
I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001035707
Just beyond the edges of our little circle of sunshine, a ferocious war was going on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001035897
In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001035951
Number one of the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001036624
There is always just a thin line separating deep faith from intolerance, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001038391
There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001040753
Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001041142
So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001041809
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001043351
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001046355
Toru: What happens when people open their hearts?
Reiko: They get better. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001046669
She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001048224
I'm pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don't know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001049001
Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001050418
My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001050428
I don't know what I want. And, if that's the case, as my ex-wife said, I'd only hurt people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001050587
Enough of your prattle," the old man said. "I cannot abide people who conjure up a raft of excuses, disparaging the efforts of those who have gone out of their way to help them. Such people are common trash. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001051567
Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001052359
The Brothers Karamazov, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001052734
I forgive you. And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001053687
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001053788
Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him enough -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001054181
Everyone ended up alone sooner or later. He was thirty at the time, beyond the age for complaining about loneliness. He felt as if he had put on several years all at once. But that was all. No further emotion welled up inside him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001054882
Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001055623
Cell phones are so convenient that they're an inconvenience. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001057003
You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur ... bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001057590
I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001057626
It is all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to Imagine. In dreams begin responsibilities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001057628
When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person that walked in. That's what the storm is all about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001058423
I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001059187
The further we traveled in the darkness, the more I began to feel estranged from my body. I couldn't see it, and after a while, you start to think the body is nothing but a hypothetical construct. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001059244
If you need me, use me. Don't you see? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001059302
I shake my head, turn from the window, clear my mind of thoughts of a hundred years away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001061720
Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001063231
What happens from here on out is unknown territory for anybody. There's no map. We don't find out what's waiting for us around the next corner until we turn it. I have no idea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001064211
On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely have pegged lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001064853
Since you've come all the way over here to tell me, I have a distinct feeling it doesn't matter if I do or not. Anyway, go right ahead. Add a prelude, if you'd like. And a 'Dance of the Blessed Spirits.' I don't mind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001065040
No one split with confusion could possibly produce a reasonable conclusion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001067130
If there had been a door within reach that led straight to death, he wouldn't have hesitated to push it open, without a second thought. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001068854
It is beyond comprehension who the waves are roaring for, who listens to them at nights here, what they want, and finally, who they would roar for when I was gone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001070488
What's nurtured slowly grows well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001070574
Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001072281
Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001073795
You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001074061
Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001074220
You are not lost. It's just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed
your self. You must believe in your own powers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001076380
I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001077667
The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001078021
If I had my way, me too," Sumire said, beaming. "But what
can you do? Wonderful things always come to an end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001078111
I don't give a damn about power and money per se. Really, I don't. I may be a selfish bastard, but I'm incredibly cool about shit like that. I could be a Zen saint. The one thing I do have, though, is curiosity. I want to see what I can do out there in the big, tough world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001078503
Things that have form will all disappear. But certain feelings stay with us forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001078628
In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001079557
I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001080563
I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001080994
As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001081771
I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001082089
Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001082254
And besides, thought Yoshida, If it was all right for God to test man, why was it wrong for man to test God? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001082706
People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001083403
But once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality. You would do well to remember that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001084991
Sometimes I feel so- I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going'
Like a little lost Sputnik?'
I guess so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001084997
It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001085452
But hell, you've gotta work with what you've got. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001086214
The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one's eyes without seeing anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001087441
Only by learning the truth - whatever that truth might be - could people be given the right kind of power. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001089683
IT's not death. It's eternal life. And you get't'be yourself. Compared to that, this world isn't but a momentary fantasy. Please don't forget that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001090475
I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001092019
The bottle and the cap don't fit: is the problem with the bottle or the cap? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001092395
I wonder what either of us knows about love. Our love has never been tested. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001092575
Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001092643
The world's full of groundless ill will. I'll never understand it, you'll never understand it, but it exists all the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001095338
This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I've somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001095516
This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001095787
In kicking the balls, the most important thing was never to hesitate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001096235
Thank you," she said. Then, as if writing a tiny footnote at the corner of a page, she added, "I might have a chance to see you again, someday. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001096284
They might just as well have been throwing pebbles into an empty cave. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001100092
The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001100717
The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001100831
And so, on the surface at least, I had become an ordinary girl again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001101314
Every person has their own colour. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001103846
A sense of calm envelopes me, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001103984
You're all grown up now, so you have to take responsibility for your choices. Otherwise, you ruin everything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001104061
To tell you the truth, sleepless nights are as unusual for me as sumo wrestlers who look good in berets. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001104441
What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn 20 soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were 16 and 17 has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001105181
Push the buttons. Pull the levers. Pretty soon, reality just flows off and away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001106229
I loved her smile. It soothed me, encouraged me. It'll be all right, her smile told me. Just hang in there, and everything will turn out okay. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001106322
You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001106773
Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's not worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001107060
For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001107746
But maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001107821
Their dark silhouettes numbed the soft part of his brain, like a bee stinging and numbing a caterpillar, then laying eggs on the surface of its body. The bee larvae use the paralyzed caterpillar as a convenient source of food and devour it as soon as they're born. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001108312
Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn't lead to anything -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001108610
Well, with facts what's important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001109623
Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001111076
The human fruit is always ripe for peeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001111312
Most of the troubles in life come on all of a sudden. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001113368
The curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001113732
If only I could fall
sound asleep and wake up in my old reality! -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001113837
One day, I lost sight of her. I happened to glance away for a moment, and when I turned back, she had disappeared. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001113888
I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001114739
When it's all over, it'll seem like a dream. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001115182
Once you've hidden something, you have to keep it hidden. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001116766
That one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001117005
Heart and mind at the bottom of the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001118244
Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001119586
Considering the sense of powerlessness that such a state of affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool of mysterious question marks seems like a minor sin. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001120104
Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001120287
The four colorful people - and colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001121659
The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001122298
Life has gotten too much. I have no problem with dying as I am. I don't have the energy to go out and find a method to help me take my life. But quietly accepting death, that I can handle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001122321
When I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like I'm looking at some strange dog leaving a twisty piece of poop on our lawn out back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001122419
I'm going to live to be twenty-five,' she said, 'then die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001122702
And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001124107
There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001124239
Die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001124597
I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don't have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That's my problem now. I can't find the image ... I'm standing still, and I can't find the image.
- Toru -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001124632
I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001125006
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. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001125098
Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001125392
Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so ... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001125487
Probably." "Again with the probablys." "A world full of probablys," she said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001127938
He met the man at the college pool. Like Tsukuru, the man swam by himself early every morning. They began to have a nodding acquaintance, and eventually, they started to talk. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001127943
How many girls has he slept with?" "It's probably up to eighty now," I said. "But in his case, the higher the numbers go, the less each individual act seems to mean. Which is what I think he's trying to accomplish. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001129185
That's right. It's all about the weenie. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001129691
You know something?" she said.
"What?"
"I'm completely empty."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001130311
People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001130837
Like the song says, rainy days and Mondays always get ya down. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001130943
Every story has a time to be told, I convinced her. Otherwise you'll be forever a prisoner to the secret inside you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001131243
She and I were bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that for us from the start -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001131327
Like a blind dolphin, the night of the new moon silently drew near. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001131359
Making love was a joining, a connection between one person and another. You receive something, and you also have to give -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001131654
in each shave lies a philosophy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001132118
If there's pain I've never tasted, I'd elite to try it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001133643
Mutual understanding is of critical importance. There are those who say that 'understanding' is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001133899
It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001135001
When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody and don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001136871
Even if things were the same, people's perception of them might have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001137044
I think I just don't like names. Basically, I can't see what's wrong with calling me 'me' or you 'you' or us 'us' or them 'them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001137717
The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001137787
Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001137904
At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001138142
After wasting so much pulp and ink myself, who was I to complain about waste? We live in an advanced capitalist society, after all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001138421
The clock shows 3 p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001139121
I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things anymore. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001139471
Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001139474
There was something strange about her eyes. They were mysteriously lacking in depth. They were lovely eyes, but they did not seem to be looking at anything. They were all surface, like glass eyes. But of course they were not glass eyes. They moved, and their lids blinked. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001141145
Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry - at someone else or at herself - which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001141606
I just put my heart into it. That's the difference. It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something, you can do it, up to a point. If you really work at being happy, you can do it, up to a point ... Anything more than that is luck. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001142437
I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001142852
Will you wait for me forever? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001144349
She was on the verge of losing when a white smoke shot up from the pile. With no wind to disperse it, the smoke became an unbroken thread rising straight towards the sky. The pile must have caught fire somewhere, but still there was no sign of flames. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001146627
A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001147155
I simply wanted to bring out the ways that each of us (though on vastly different levels) is dedicated to music. That was my original motive, and I like to think that, to some extent, I have succeeded. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001147667
I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001148336
Find me now. Before someone else does. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001148481
If there's something I can't do but want to, I won't relax until I'm able to do it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001148822
If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001151029
The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001151666
It's as though I'm looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, and no matter how far I stretch out my hand, I can't touch them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001152007
Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still you can't say I didn't try,' my shadow says, then pauses. 'I loved you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001152606
It is my huge pleasure that my novels are translated into languages that are read among small numbers of people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001152836
She was yours to begin with. Now, maybe, she's where she belongs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001153566
I could have been a cult writer if I'd kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001154771
Although I was lonely, I was not unhappy. I was able to cling to myself. At least now I had a self to cling to. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001155368
When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001155961
When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001157310
If you look at things from a distance, most anything looks beautiful. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001160082
It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001160592
I love you," I said to her. "From the bottom of my heart. I don't ever want to let you go again. But there's nothing I can do. I can't make a move."
"Because of her?"
I nodded. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001161935
I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be ... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001162718
See you around," I said.
"See you around," said one.
"See you around," said the other.
The phrase echoed in my heart for a long while.
The bus door closed with a bang, and then they were waving to me from the window. Everything repeats itself... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001163148
Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001163674
Like someone excitedly relating a story, only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go, the undergrowth taking over. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001164473
Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001164586
Afterward, Tsukuru Tazaki's life was changed forever, as if a sheer ridge had divided the original vegetation into two distinct biomes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001164933
You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001165052
If there are this many visible parts of my body that are worse than normal people's, then if I start considering other aspects - personality, brains, athleticism, things of this sort - the list will be endless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001165692
This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001166140
We are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001166728
A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001166805
A perfect silence blanketed the floor like a heavy fog. The -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001168217
Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001168549
I wounded you deeply, all because it suited the situation as I saw it. Even though I loved you so much. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001168554
That was the rule. Break one of my rules once, and I'm bound to break many more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001169327
In the end, writing is not a full step toward self-healing, just a tiny, very tentative move in that direction. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001169805
Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001169831
He decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001171634
A few gray cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001173420
Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001173909
I can't think straight any more. It's as if the core of my body is coagulating. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001174404
No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything."

Haruki Murakami. "Kafka on the Shore.". -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001174471
He was as powerless and lonely as a river confronting the sea. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001175204
No, maybe it wasn't as dramatic as the term circumstances made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001175912
I gazed up at the sky. I was in a tiny boat, on a vast ocean. No wind, no waves, just me floating there. Adrift on the open sea..
..A tiny boat cut loose from the fiction of the ship. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001176876
But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001177845
And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy and I'll never make these kinds of selfish demands again. I swear. I'll be a good girl. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001178448
Sometimes I talk to people. A lot of the time, though, it's just a letdown. There aren't many people out there worth knowing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001179080
With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001180595
How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001181913
She leans forward, revealing an ear: a freshly formed, soap-smooth, pretty ear, its delicate outline glistening with a tracery of fine hairs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001183065
Having your own opinion and not being very bright are two different things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001183337
For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but for me she's just a clumsy girl. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001183945
I finally reach the end. Strangely, I have no feeling of accomplishment. The only thing I feel is utter relief that I don't have to run anymore. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001184234
Making maps was the one small dream of his one small life. Who had the right to make fun of him for that? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001186467
Gotanda swung by at either-forty. He was wearing a perfectly ordinary gray V-neck sweater over a perfectly ordinary blue button-down shirt with- you got it - perfectly ordinary cotton slacks. And still he looked striking. Extraordinarily so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001186596
Even if I left this world, I doubt anyone would notice. I would shout out from the dark, but no one would hear me. Still, I have to keep soldiering on until I die, the only way I know how. Not a laudable sort of life, but the only life I know how to live. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001186680
The ones with no imagination are always the quickest to justify themselves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001190587
As a whole, humanity doesn't lend itself to generalizations. But as I see it, there are two types of people: the comprehensive-vision type and the limited-perspective type. Me, I seem to be the latter. Not that I ever had much problem justifying my limits. A person has to draw lines somewhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001190666
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it
to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001190697
Unimpeded by other schemes, this hint of things to come takes time to expand in the new morning light, and we attempt to watch it unobtrusively, with deep concentration. The night has begun to open up at last. There will be time until the next darkness arrives. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001190919
I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001191872
I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001192472
Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001192813
it's a fine moon', she repeated -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001192936
And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001193241
They probably don't even eat pizza without letting it cool off. It -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001195044
The image of her in another man's arms was stuck in my mind, as real as life. As if there was a demon with nowhere else to go clinging to a corner of the ceiling, eyes fastened on me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001195774
Sometimes, when the world gets too hard to live in, I come here for vodka and tonic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001196244
I'm going to swim 0.93 miles, ride a bike 24.8 miles, then run a final 6.2 miles. And what's all that supposed to prove? How is this any different from pouring water in an old pan with a tiny hole in the bottom? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001196258
Have you ever had that feeling - that you'd like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001197225
Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001197333
She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She'd never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn't a matter of pride, I think. She just did what seemed natural to her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001197945
My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrass for a moment but not asking a question is embarrasing for a life time -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001198105
1970 - A YEAR with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put an end to my teen years. Now I could step ahead into a whole new swamp. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001198669
Seeing her now, the true weight of sixteen years of time struck him with a sudden intensity. There are some things, he concluded, that can only be expressed through the shape of a woman's form. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001199218
I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001199266
I knew little about short story writing then so it was rough going, but I did find the experience very memorable. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001199491
The more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001199548
In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001200432
But there's such a thing as a way of living that's guided by the way a person's going to die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001200679
That's advanced capitalism for you: The player making the maximum capital investment gets the maximum critical information in order to reap the maximum desired profit with maximum capital efficiency - and nobody bats an eye. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001201069
Not being able to find the right words at crucial times is one of my many problems. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001201735
I don't think I'd want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001204382
I just want to think deeply about things. Contemplate ideas in a pure, free sort of way. That's all. If you think about it, that's kind of like constructing a vacuum. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001205154
Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have no choice but to accept it in silence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001205638
The silence is so deep it hurts our ears. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001206352
That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001206711
He had probably never thought about the difference between hard work and manual labour, either. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001208347
The conductor was so totally without expression he could have pulled off a bank robbery without covering his face. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001208565
When Debussy was seeming to get nowhere with an opera he was composing, he put it this way: "I spent my days pursuing the nothingness -le rien - it creates." My job is to create that void, that rien.
Hunting knife -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001208870
Better to know a little, I figure, than nothing at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001209040
People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001209123
Nature is actually unnatural -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001211186
Don't worry, it's only death. Don't let it bother you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001211572
In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001212749
I don't get bored. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001213404
The truth sometimes reminds me of a city buried in sand. As time passes, the sand piles up even thicker, and occasionally it's blown away and what's below is revealed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001213796
An image begins taking shape. Soon, however, it becomes diagonally deformed, like italics, and disappears like a flame blown out. Then the whole process starts again. The image strains to right itself. Trembling, it tries to give concrete form to something. But the image will not come together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001218813
When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001219201
When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001219749
Time goes by so damn fast. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001220046
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001220399
Revolution or not, the working class will keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure as hell isn't just changing the name on city hall. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001220418
Nakata's empty inside ... Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001220425
I was a vacant room. Inside, the music produces only a dry, hollow echo. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001220619
Genius or fool, you don't live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody's going to come along and screw up the works. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001221271
But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001221357
It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001222280
She only felt revulsion for any kind if religious fundamentalists. The very thought if such people's intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of their own superiority, and thei callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001223169
The world is moving ahead on its own without my being aware of it, as if we're playing a game in which everybody else can move only when I have my eyes closed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001223183
Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let sunlight wake someone very special to you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001223785
Speaking frankly and speaking the truth are two different things entirely. Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001224600
The weather service reported that there weren't any atmospheric conditions present that might have led to fish raining from the sky. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001225094
I've got people I want to understand and people I want to be understood by. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001225692
When you get to be my age, you can stay alive eating very little,' she said. 'Of the finest food possible,' she added half in jest. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001225720
I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001227538
I'm still sure we'll run across each other in some strange place years from now. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001227550
No, I don't have the slightest desire to rewrite the past or history or whatever. What I'd like to rewrite is the present, here and now. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001227989
I'll just come right out and say it, rich people have no imagination. They can't even scratch their own asses without a ruler and a flashlight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001228180
You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001231599
I decided to go swimming. I don't know how to explain this, but I wanted to purge my body of something by exercising it to the limit. Purge it - of what? I spent some time wondering about that. Purge it of what?
I didn't know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001231822
What's really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn't amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001232347
Reality is endlessly cold and lonely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001234599
I have always loved Naoko, and I still loved her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001234846
The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001234973
In response to my father-in-law's view, I offered no opinion. He was not looking for my opinion. He had merely been spouting his belief, a conviction that would remain unchanged for all eternity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001235705
No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001237588
Now that I can no longer see you, I realize how much I needed you -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001238580
Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001239450
A Russian who uses his imagination is done for. I certainly never use mine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001240401
We ourselves will never know much of perpetuity. But we can get a faint inkling of what it's like. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001241133
Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001241569
There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001241768
When you get used to that kind of life - of never having anything you want - then you stop knowing what it is you want. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001243285
Writing things was important, wasn't it? Nakata asked.
'Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001243287
Mr. Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can't be too cautious. The same holds true for cats and human beings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001243291
Are there any capitalist cats?" Nakata asked -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001243292
Things change every day, Mr Nakata. With each new dawn it's not the same world as the day before. And you're not the same person you were, either. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001244899
What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001245327
You're you, you see, and nobody else. You are you, right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001245520
Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking men in the balls. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001246497
I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001246893
This was his favorite time of day, reading to his heart's content before going to sleep. When he tired of reading, he would fall asleep. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001247857
I begin to get sad around noon time, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001248527
She still smiles from time to time, definitely a charming smile, but it's always limited somehow, a smile that never goes beyond the moment. A high, invisible wall surrounds her, holding people at arm's length. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001248530
However miserable your situation, there is always something to learn. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001249288
That's life, man. The sand of the times keeps running out from under our feet. We're no longer standing where we once stood. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001249875
From time immemorial, symbolism and poetry have been inseparable. Like a pirate and his rum. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001250668
The world's filled with things I don't know about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001252606
Jealousy was not a place he was forced into by someone else, but a jail in which the inmate entered voluntarily, locked the door, and threw away the key. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001252629
It felt as though I was living at the bottom of a deep well, completely shut up inside myself, cursing my fate, hating everything outside. Occasionally I ventured outside myself, putting on a good show of being alive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001253308
But as Nietzsche said, 'The gods furl their flags at boredom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001254190
The real world - where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001255367
All without any more sound than flipping over a playing card. And sitting in this limo, compared to my fifteen-year-old Volkswagen Beetle I'd bought off a friend, was as quiet as sitting at the bottom of a lake wearing earplugs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001257990
When people are dead, you can forgive them 'most anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001258808
Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001258824
I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001260089
I don't like CDs," he replies. "Why not?" "They're too shiny." Kaoru -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001260932
Truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001261742
They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001263299
People are awkward creatures. A lot more awkward than you seem to realize. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001264175
The girls had suddenly disappeared, and Haida had taken their place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001265111
The gears of life had moved ahead a notch with a loud ker-chunk, and Junpei knew that they would never turn back again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001265412
No matter how tired the body gets, one must never let the exhaustion enter one's thoughts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001266005
The narrower a man's intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001266116
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001267376
People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001268170
Compared to the complexity of the universe, this world of ours is like the brain of a worm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001269606
It's physical. If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001270903
For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001272859
Like it or not, I'm here now, in the year 1Q84. The 1984 that I knew no longer exists. It's 1Q84 now. The air has changed, the scene has changed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001273731
It's all matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001274703
I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001275699
Expect nothing, get nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001276800
Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001277885
Most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001278820
There're all sorts of cats - just like there're all sorts of people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001282062
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. So said Voltaire, the realist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001282411
Whether you admit them or not, mistakes are mistakes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001282528
How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001283081
Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001283282
What do you think the most gruelin' thing about evolution is?" "I don't know. Tell me," I said. "It's being unable to pick and choose. Nobody chooses to evolve. It's like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what's happening until they hit, then it's too late." I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001283374
At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001287681
Never in my life had I seen such a slim nothing of a figure eat like such a terror. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001288815
If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001288820
I'd made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre a world it might be, this was it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001289741
The music world is where child prodigies go to die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001290734
Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong, to become part of something. To have someone cry for me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001291983
Her words didn't have the acrid smell of death. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001292106
All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001292402
I still have that fear, even now - that suddenly my very existence will be denied and, through no fault of my own, I'll be hurled into the night sea once more. Maybe that's why I haven't been able to form deep relationships with people. I always keep a distance between me and others." He -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001293040
Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001293341
Image is everything. You don't spare any expense to create the right image. And word of mouth is critical. Once you get a good reputation, momentum will carry you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001294398
DON'T LET APPEARANCES FOOL YOU -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001295314
Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001295715
supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and / He is me: / Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001295724
If you can't get it across in words, then it's better not to try. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001296148
The world would be a pretty dull place if it were made up only of the first-rate, right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001296290
Tsukuru decided not to pursue it further. He could think about it all he wanted and never find an answer. He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled "Pending" and postponed any further consideration. He had many such drawers inside him, with numerous doubts and questions tucked away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001296608
And my inability to share this anger with anybody in the lobby aroused in me a profound sense of isolation. - Toru Okada -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001297735
I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it's not like that. It happens overnight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001299544
So after he died, I didn't know how to relate to other people. I didn't know what it means to love another person. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001300366
Does this mean that my life has been nothing but a process through which I am giving concrete form to the dormant image inside me? And how much responsibility do I bear ... ? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001300750
Sometimes a certain kind of dream can be even stronger than reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001301115
Be fearless, be brave, be bold, love yourself -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001301807
I have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation's almost the same. I'm kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001302117
I'm caught between one void and another. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. I don't even know what I want any more. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001302586
Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001302587
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 is raining. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001303606
If you can let it go at not understanding, that's the best anyone could expect. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001304189
like a small sandstorm that keeps changing -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001305972
The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn't stand it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001307117
Maybe the easiest things are the hardest to come up with. Like they say, people miss what's going on right under their noses. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001307969
It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001309081
It must be hard to pass your twentieth birthday alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001310932
For her, loneliness is something you have others remove for you. And once it's gone, everything's okay. Doesn't go any further. I can't live that way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001311539
Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001311540
I mean, public libraries like this one were always short of money, so building even the tiniest of labyrinths had to be beyond their means. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001312033
Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001313313
When the time comes, everybody's got to end up where they belong. Only me, I didn't have a place to call my own. It's like musical chairs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001313934
You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001314026
Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001314412
My arm was not the one she needed, but the arm of someone else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of someone else. I felt almost guilty being me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001314855
If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001315201
Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001318374
Dying is the only way/ For you to float free: / Nomonhan -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001318830
You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001319611
What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001320150
Why do people wage war? Why do hundreds of thousands, even millions of people group together and try to annihilate each other? Do people start wars out of anger? Or fear? Or are anger and fear just two aspects of the same spirit? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001320636
There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001320936
What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001321141
Date etiquette lesson number two: Don't die. Go on living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001322046
This is the extent of his knowledge of the sea: it was very big, it was salty, and fish lived there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001322289
I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I'd date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn't what I want. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001322894
Them-and-us-attitude -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001322982
But knowing what I don't want to do doesn't help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don't have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That's my problem now. I can't find the image. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001322996
Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001323969
I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001324794
People like him are looking for just one thing, and that is to find, if only once in their lifetimes, a work that is unmistakably the real thing. They want to put it on a tray and serve it up to the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001326690
I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001327288
That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001327298
Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001329343
As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001331354
Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001331546
Why Nizan, of all people? She sounded like she was trying to pick a fight. Like she wanted to kick something and send it flying, but lacking a suitable target had attacked my choice of reading matter. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001331842
Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001331965
I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001332590
The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001332614
You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life - you will be getting older. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001332938
Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001334204
It is very difficult to logically explain the illogical. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001335531
Maybe that's why people don't like you. You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makses some people angry. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001336047
There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001337044
It was so wonderful! Now it felt as if my brain was just going to melt away. I wanted to stay like that forever, to stay in his arms for the rest of my life. That's how great it was. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001337077
writing was like breathing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001339104
Noboru Wataya,
Where are you?
Did the wind-up bird
Forget to wind your spring? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001339222
He was with energetic young college girls. It was like playing with a kitten, fresh and fun at first, but tiring in the end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001339718
I was enveloped in numbness, and absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001340336
But people need to cling to something," Oshima says. "They have to. You're doing the same, even though you don't realize it. It's like Goethe said: Everything's a metaphor. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001340358
What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001341300
No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001341308
He had that feeling he remembered from childhood when he opened a new textbook at the beginning of the term, ignorant of its contents but sensing the new knowledge to come. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001342922
I'm scared," she said. "These days I feel like a snail without a shell." "I'm scared too," I said. "I feel like a frog without any webs." She looked up and smiled. Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001344414
Happiness was one of the farthest things away from her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001344992
It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001346011
If I ever get reincarnated, let me make certain I don't come back as a paperclip. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001346044
You like sequences," Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark. "To me, they're like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001347172
If you think of someone enough, you're sure to meet them again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001347251
Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001348410
Uncanny how models in cigarette ads always have that not-watching-anything, not-thinking-anything look in their eyes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001349354
It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001349889
To know one's own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one's own face with one's own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one's reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001350222
When I spend the day alone,
I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001351493
Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001351504
I've built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001352774
I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001353311
Reaching the finish line, never walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001354040
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001354678
The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001354734
Stared into my eyes as if searching for a coin she had dropped into a shallow pond. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001355395
About half the people in the world dislike their own name. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001356361
Sumire was so bereft of household goods the place looked deserted. There weren't any curtains in the windows and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a gang of intellectual refugees. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001357789
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001357885
I could never live with this man, she thought. I could never get inside his heart. But I might be able to die with him." - ( From the short story "Landscape in Flatiron") -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001358077
It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001358319
Even from whatever miserable experience you might have, there is something to be learned. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001358555
Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where - at a special time and place - imagination had been set free. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001360500
Nothingness means there's absolutely nothing, so maybe there's no need to understand it or imagine it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001363421
Occasionally, someone coughed with a dry rasp that sounded like a mummy tapped on the head with a pair of tongs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001365096
And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001365158
I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001365545
It's like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can't touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, it's brilliance gone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001365640
If one operates on the principle that everything can be a learning experience, then of course aging needn't be so painful."
-from "Hear the Wind Sing -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001366826
Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001367586
The fact is that they always go after your weakest point - the wolves chase down the weakest sheep in the herd. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001368489
Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001369097
I learned there were lots of realities in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001371011
My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001371193
Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001372048
Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001372476
If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001373966
Champagne's completely useless, you know," he said. "The only good part is the moment you pop the cork. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001375181
I realized that I had never had occasion to look into her eyes like this. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001376630
Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001377618
It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001378769
To him, writing was like breathing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001379367
I'm me, and at the same time not me. That's what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001379552
It's the same as a hereditary disease, weakness. No matter how much you understand it, there's nothing you can do to cure yourself. It's not going to go away with a clap of the hand. It just keeps getting worse and worse -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001380319
If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001380408
The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn't going to be very
useful in the real world, that's for sure. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001381344
Our responsibility begins with our imagination. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001381643
So in the end maybe that's the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves." Takatsuki -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001381688
What's important is the will to win. In the real world we can't always win. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001381899
So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001381907
Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent. That -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001382769
Maybe in a few years I'll be able to explain things better, but after a few years it probably won't matter anymore, will it? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001384283
In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001384501
A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will
over and over. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001385144
Aomame gave him a perfunctory smile. I don't give a shit about your business, mister, she thought, I just happen to like the shape of your head. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001386394
Reality was one step out of line, a cardigan with the buttons done up wrong. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001386599
Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001386900
Nights without work I spent with whisky and books. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001387124
We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001387248
Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001389622
As long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001390461
Better to have somebody who isn't boring than somebody who is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001391790
If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001392663
The me that's here now has been brought up without any brothers or sisters. If I did have brothers or sisters I wouldn't be the me I am. So it's unnatural for the me that's here before you to think about what it'd be like to have brothers or sisters ... . -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001393456
Cats can get by without names. We go by smell, shape, things of this nature. As long as we know these things, there're no worries for us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001394287
We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001394664
This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost.'
'It's not my war.'
'Whose war doesn't matter. Whose money doesn't matter either, That's what war is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001394687
What makes us most normal is knowing that we're not normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001394946
He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001395023
To wit, existence is communication and communication is existence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001395362
But you know Hajime, some feelings cause us pain because they remain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001395647
The thing I'm most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I'm going to do. Of not knowing what I'm doing right now -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001396061
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001396209
Still, how much jurisdiction does fairness hold over sex? If fairness was what you wanted, your sex life would be as exciting as the algae growing in an aquarium. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001397558
Hey daddy, want a cucumber? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001398389
People with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001398457
I find what's pure and clean and see that it gets all mucked up. But that's what people call information. And when you dredge up every bit of dirt from every corner of the living environment, that's what you call enhanced information. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001398794
That box contains the 'something' that was inside you. You didn't know that when you carried it here and gave it to Keiko with your own hands. Now you'll never get it back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001399009
Once you're in that world, you can reclaim everything from this world, everything you're going to have to give up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001399645
April and May were painful, lonely months for me because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like this. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001400005
It's no fun growing old, no fun at all. The drawers where you store memories get harder to open. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001400022
Is this what it means to go back to square one? Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001400556
Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001401246
We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001401851
Are you the sort of boy who finds fault with every little thing, however trivial? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001404252
Ice contains no future , just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001404854
As far as I could see, she had no opinion at all about anything that was not set directly in front of her (and in fact, she was extremely nearsighted). -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001405304
Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001405670
'It's hard to come by peanuts that crack so nice and crisp,' said J. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001406395
I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001406942
As I already explaned, I don't have any form. I'm a conceptual metaphysical object. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001407151
This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001407305
I love you, I really do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001409184
Things cultivated over such a long time don't just vanish into nothingness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001409798
I'm just ordinary guy, ordinary family, ordinary education, ordinary face, ordinary exam results, ordinary thought in my head -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001409972
When I'm with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I don't want to let you go. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001410398
Not just beautiful, though
the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001410459
Death was as silent as the ocean bottom, as sweet as a rose in May. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001410670
Had the advancement of medicine, then, done nothing more than to expose, subdivide, and further complicate the problems faced by the human species? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001410918
Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek a kind of fairness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411733
Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411734
I no longer considered running the point of life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411735
Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411736
When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411737
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411738
I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411739
When I am running my mind empties itself. Everything I think while running is subordinate to the process. The thoughts that impose themselves on me while running are like light gusts of wind
they appear all of a sudden, disappear again and change nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411740
By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical. First there came the action of running, and accompanying it there was this entity known as me. I run; therefore I am. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411741
I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411742
I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411743
I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411744
Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411745
There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411746
Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life - -and for me, for writing as well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001411779
Are you prepared to die?"
"I am half dead already," Nimit said as if stating the obvious. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001412276
he was coming while in the elementary school classroom, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001413151
This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn't a place for me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001413560
You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and you couldn't expect anyone to find you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001414132
If you don't hurry, you'll be lost for eternity. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001415063
Just be careful of water -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001415964
If sympathy was all it took to clean up shit, I'd have 50 times as much sympathy as anybody else -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001416027
It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001416278
In dreams begin responsibilities.
~page 132 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001416628
Boys that age will say things like that. They don't know how to express exactly how they feel, so they say and do the opposite. They hurt people that way, for no reason at all, and they hurt themselves too. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001416963
Money isn't like mushrooms in a forest - it doesn't just pop up on its own, you know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001419528
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. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001419589
Special emotions that arise only in a dark corner unknown to other people, where the real and the unreal secretly mingle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001419743
As you may know, in this Town, memory is unreliable and uncertain. There are things we can remember and things we cannot remember. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001420196
I have read all my novels that were translated into English. Reading my novels is enjoyable because I forget almost all the content in them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001421648
If people aren't equal, where would you fit in? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001422033
You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001422969
I like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence. It's just like gardening or something. You put the seed into the soil at the right time, in the right place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001423196
I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of
that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect ... I find that encouraging. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001423260
Possibilities are like cancer. The more I think about them, the more they multiply, and there's no way to stop them. I'm out of control. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001424121
And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001426980
Wherever the intention of each might lie, we are together being carried along at the same speed down the same river of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001428412
Six pull-tabs lay in the ashtray like scales from a mermaid. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001430567
Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001431704
When all around is dark, there is nothing to do but to wait until the eye accustomed to the dark -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001433395
Most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001433677
A more pressing problem for me is that I have never been able to love anyone seriously. I have never felt unconditional love for anyone since the day I was born, never felt that I could give myself completely to that one person. Never once. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001434330
The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001434391
It's a waste of time to think about things you can't know, and things you can't confirm even if you know them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001435257
Proust's In Search of Lost Time? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001436049
Maybe it's been like that for you till now. But you're not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It's simple. It's your right ... right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001436828
Have your dream ... What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001437594
The more he thought about the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, the more uncertain he became of his own reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001439406
we can't survive on our own. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001439694
When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001440386
There were three thin wrinkles at her neckline, sharply etched, like notches on the road of life. Or maybe they were marks to commemorate when three wishes had come true - though Ushikawa had serious doubt that this had ever happened. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001440506
Hey Kizuki, I thought, you're not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The assholes are earning their college credits and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001441186
The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met."
"You've met God?"
"Certainly. I telephone Him every night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001442347
I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001442732
The way everyone pretends to be on the same wavelength without questioning or talking about things - it doesn't get anyone anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001443396
Writing a novel is like having a dream. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001443683
In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001443739
It's hard to stop a war once it starts. Once the sword is drawn, blood's going to be spilled. This doesn't have anything to do with theory or logic, or even my ego. It's just a rule, pure and simple. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001443922
Alright, then, where do the lost names go? The probability of their surviving in the maze of a city must be extremely low. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001444135
We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001444559
That does it for me, then. I'm not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I'm going to believe in." "Peace," I said. "Peace," said Midori. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001446154
What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001446477
As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001447392
Tsukuru nodded. "Life's moving along smoothly, then." "I don't know about smoothly, but it's moving along, at least. 'There's no going back now' might be another way of putting it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001448624
I wanted to begin a new life where I didn't know a soul. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001449938
People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001452743
What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001452911
Though no one else noticed this, he thought his shadow on the ground was paler, lighter, than that of other people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001452979
Let me tell you, though, my father never once cheated on his taxes. That's just how he is, a real old-fashioned straight arrow. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001453053
The longer you stay in here , the more you get to thinking that things are normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001454325
Both were rather precocious, and like many precocious young people they found it hard to grow up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001454449
No matter how far you go, you can never be anything but yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001454458
No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001454928
I feel it can be dangerous to explain whole cultures with buzzwords. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001455377
Not everything was lost in the flow of time -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001455399
For a moment an agreeable aftertaste remained, but after a few seconds this disappeared, like morning dew on a summer leaf. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001458686
Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001459408
Memories feign through scarcely perceived doors of my being. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001459448
I'm glad to know that time still keeps on flowing at four in the morning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001461216
Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001464100
Many long months and years seemed to have passed since the room had made up its mind never to welcome any visitors. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001465513
It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001466152
For only through assiduous repetition is it possible to redistribute skewed tendencies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001466307
I might think I can't take it any more, that I can't go on any more, but one way or another I get past that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001466853
Vacations and friends are the two best things in life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001468608
The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let's leave doubt for tomorrow," Komatsu said. "That is the point. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001468727
For me, it was a lonely season. Whenever I got home and took off my clothes, I felt as if any second my bones would burst through my skin. Like some unknown force inside me had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and was leading me off in some strange direction to another world -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001470469
Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001471263
He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001471494
I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001472272
I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001472846
Our worlds are all jumbled together
your world, my world, the sheepman's world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don't. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001473847
As we live, we breathe death into our lungs, like fine particles of dust. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001474559
If you listen carefully, you can hear these things. If you look carefully, you'll see what you're after -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001476664
Pain is what gives rise to meditation -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001476979
People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restrictsyour thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001477912
We can't undo what has already happened. Once something's ruined, it can't go back to the way it was. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001479764
No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001480081
People face death while they're still alive, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001481452
No matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection. And even supposing the will is there, there are times like now when we don't know the other party's number. Or even if we know the number, we misdial. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001481690
Now and then may not be enough ... You have to enjoy it while you're still young. enjoy it to the fullest. You can use the memories of what you did to warm your body after you get old and can't do it anymore. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001482149
The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001482885
You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001484024
it's like the land that time forgot. Or more like a place that's holding its breath, hoping time won't stumble upon it. Down -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001485646
I can't read, can't listen to music. I can't do anything but just sit there, waiting for morning to come. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001486712
While they are still alive, people can become ghosts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001486832
All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. They may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001486878
I turn a corner," I offered, "just as someone ahead of me turns the next corner. I can't see what that person looks like. All I can make out is a flash of white coattails. But the whiteness of the coattails is indelibly etched in my consciousness. Ever get that feeling? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001487271
Death, of course, lasts forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001488861
On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001490109
I've been all around. I've made a complete revolution. And I've come back to the fact that I need you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001491291
You are a biznessman and I am a biznessman," he went on. "Realistically, there should be nothing between us to discuss but bizness. Let us leave discussions regarding the unrealistic to others. Are we agreed? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001491490
You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001493509
I'm dying of thirst but lack the strength to even drink water anymore. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001493871
It's a funny thing sensing someone else's sex drive. After a while, you get to mistaking it for your own. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001496319
Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001496604
Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001497155
I can stab myself, but I can't reach the knife to pull it out. And then everything starts to disappear. I start to fade away, too. Only the knife is always there - to the very end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001498385
Whether you take a doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut in the slightest bit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001499002
Nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001500403
The gym where I work out in Tokyo has a poster that says, "Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose." A painful reality, but a reality all the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001503789
My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001504124
The harder I try to realistically portray real things, the more the things that appear in my work have a tendency to become unreal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001504666
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001505014
My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001506175
Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001506711
I got to know her well, and we talked about all sorts of things. We understood each other. You could even say I loved her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001506745
Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001507460
I'm not very good at giving people orderly explanations of things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001508699
What his time spent with women offered was the opportunity 2 be embraced by reality on the one hand, while negating it entirely on the other -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001508987
All I can do is live the life I have. I can't trade it in for a new one. However strange and misshapen it might be, this is it for the gene carrier that is me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001509876
Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001510388
Nights without work I spend with whisky and books. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001510466
You have to say 'Men with a thinning problem'. Bald is discriminatory. I was joking around once and suggested 'gentlemen who are follically challenged'. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001510816
He never had a positive feeling of love towards any of them, however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other's emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001510946
Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001511369
If the boat they were riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was nothing to do but fall with it. Tebngo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would do nothing to change the flow of the river. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001511708
There were hundreds of varieties of orchids, each with a history of its own. Royalty had been known to die for the sake of orchids. Orchids had an ineffable aura of fatalism. And on the article went. To all things, philosophy and fate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001512243
For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.
From something like that or it doesn't begin at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001513007
Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001515362
He'd returned to this world with his mind wiped clean. The proverbial blank slate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001515390
Sheepish butlers' surgical bottle battles"
a tongue twister p.364 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001516438
All imperfections are forced upon the imperfect, so the 'perfect' can live content and oblivious. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001517444
Weakness is something that rots in the body. Like gangrene. I've felt that ever since I was a teenager. That's why I was always on edge. There's this something inside you that's rotting away and you feel it all along. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001518072
The sheep man has his world. I have mine. And you have yours, too. Am I right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001518347
A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001518364
I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now maybe, she's where she belongs. But in this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could for Naoko. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001518530
If he was going to be given news about his mother, it had to come not in bits and pieces, but as a comprehensive 'revelation.' It had to be, as it were, a vivid cosmic landscape, the full vast expanse of which could be seen in a split second. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001519412
But I was not, in the true sense of the word, alive. I simply performed the mundane tasks that were handed to me, one after another -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001519934
People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520710
No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said.
So hold me. Now. Right here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520711
I suppose it's all a matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things bother you if you wanted to - the rules, the idiots who think they're hot shit, ... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520712
I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520713
What had happened to the body I held in my arms that night last spring? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520714
I could never get excited about games you play with other people. I can't get into them. I lose interest. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520715
What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520716
I wonder what ants do on rainy days? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520717
The years 19 and 20 are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older. It's true. So think about it carefully. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520718
Such perfect little circles are impossible to maintain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520719
She and I had needed each other more than either of us knew. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520720
It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520722
Count your blessings -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520723
I think of you now mare than ever. It's raining today. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520724
Like my hairstyle?" she asked.
"It's great."
"How great?"
"Great enough to knock down all the trees in all the forests of the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001520725
No matter what we said, people would believe what they wanted to believe. The more we struggled, the more vulnerable we'd be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001522885
In parallel with their ceaseless consumption of time, people would ceaselessly reproduce time that they had mentally adjusted. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001523503
The laugh left a bitter taste in our mouths, but we laughed out all the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001523535
Good question, but no answer. Good questions never have answers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001523599
We're human, after all, and everybody's got something a little off somewhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001525831
I'm not so weird to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001526875
People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001527757
If something came out of the deal, it couldn't make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001528981
I don't know, but does it matter? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001529435
I'm not human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001530142
The leaders use their power to crush people's natural desire to think for themselves. It's foot binding for the brain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001530575
I'm forever realizing things too late. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001531097
Sometimes I get the feeling that everything that happened to me was some kind of illusion. It's as though something happened to make me think that things happened that never really happened at all. But I know for sure that they did happen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001531207
I just wanted to blame somebody. Makes me feel better.
'But that doesn't solve anything -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001533118
She smiles and looks at us, he told himself, but she doesn't see anything. She's looking at us, but she's seeing something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001533365
Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001533443
I'm the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001533806
Like odorless, colorless smoke leaking into the room through a small crack in the door. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001533847
As time passes, memory, inevitably, reconstitutes itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001534908
that means your father's the novelist, Hiraku Makimura? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001534939
As Pushkin put it: He had no itch to dig for glories deep in the dirt that time has laid. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001535800
I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing. I don't see anything else, I don't think about anything else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001538850
I collect records. And cats. I don't have any cats right now. But if I'm taking a walk and I see a cat, I'm happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001541010
Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001546010
The number of people who could deliver a kick to the balls with Aomame's mastery must have been few indeed. She had studied kick patterns with great diligence and never missed her daily practice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001546128
If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001547903
The light of morning decomposes everything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001548864
She and I would trade books, talk endlessly, drink cheap whiskey, engage in unremarkable sex. You know, the stuff of everyday. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001548915
We have a sane part of our minds and an insane part. We negotiate between those two parts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001549202
Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001549628
I'd always thought that the earth on which I stood was a solid object that would last forever. Or rather, I'd never thought about such a thing at all. I'd simply taken it for granted. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001550659
It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001550785
According to Chekhov, once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001551344
Ushikawa's appearance made him stand out. He did not have the sort of looks suited for stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001552095
The "world" - the word always makes me think of a tortoise and elephants tirelessly supporting a gigantic disc. The elephants have no knowledge of the tortoise's role, the tortoise unable to see what the elephants are doing. And neither is the least aware of the world on their backs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001552109
Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001552519
I don't want to forget the last time you touched me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001553807
It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001554654
All women have a right to give birth. We have to protect that right as much as we can. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001555191
Chance encounters are what keep us going. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001555600
I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001556548
In his life, after all, he had achieved nothing, had been totally unproductive. He couldn't make anyone else happy, and, of course, couldn't make himself happy. Happiness? He wasn't even sure what that meant. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001557319
Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001560086
Killing time is not an easy job -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001560447
Some things can't be solved just by going wild every now and then. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001561311
His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias was an important element of truth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001561936
It is hard to be an individual in Japan. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001562009
Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001562338
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. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001566068
What I'm trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001567614
The world would be a real mess if everybody was a genius. Somebody's got to keep watch, take care of business. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001567874
We're all wrong, every one of us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001570080
If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever - something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001570271
We were merely observers, getting totally absorbed in some exciting movie, our palms all sweaty, only to find that, after the houselights came on and we exited the theater, the thrilling afterglow that coursed through us ultimately meant nothing whatsoever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001570315
Defining that special something isn't easy, but when you gazed into her eyes, you could always find it, reflected deep down inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001570725
Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001571449
When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want- you stop knowing what it is you want. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001573380
I am me and not me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001574201
I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001574432
All he could do was wait like this, patiently, until it grew light out and the birds awoke and began their day. All he could do was trust in the birds, in all the birds, with their wings and beaks. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001575680
And having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through which one had to pass, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001575715
September 1973, that's where this novel begins. That's the entrance. We'll just hope there's an exit. If there isn't one, there wouldn't be any point in writing anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001576422
Putting it into words will destroy any meaning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001577318
But I think where a person is born and dies is very important. You can't choose where you're born, but where you die you can
to some degree. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001578317
She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001579342
Some things can only be done in exchange for life," the man said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001579397
There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage of acute loss. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001579636
You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can't erase the history that produced them.' Sara looked directly into his eyes. 'If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can't erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001579665
All I wanted was to put myself to sleep in towns I didn't know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001580917
That's all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you can't follow them all the way to the end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001580919
I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001581268
A secret's a secret because you don't let people in on it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001581457
Somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001581565
It's precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive - or at least a partial sense of it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001581612
I was determined that my free time was going to be mine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001582041
They were completely lacking in the sort of healthy skepticism needed to attain any degree of wisdom. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001582126
Civilization is communication," the doctor said. "That which is not expressed doesn't exist. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001582570
A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001584229
The breeze carried snatches of music from a large portable radio on the grass: a sugary song of love either lost or about to be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001584413
If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something's slowly draining out of me. It's probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he's separated from music for a long time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001585351
Still, in the end, we all die just the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001585413
I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001585962
We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse. It poses only a limited range of possibilities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001586654
This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001589368
The best point of my novels, I think, is their humor. I want to keep many my works humorous. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001589994
Habit, in fact, was what propelled his life forward. Though he no longer believed in a perfect community, nor felt the warmth of chemistry between people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001590852
The things we try our hardest not to lose, we really just put deep abysses in the spaces between them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001591078
Anyhow, be happy. I get the feeling a lot of shit is going to come your way, but you're a stubborn son of a bitch, I'm sure you'll handle it. Mind if I give you one piece of advice?" "Sure, go ahead." "Don't feel sorry for yourself," he said. "Only assholes do that. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001591612
True, he was tremendously boring, which really got on her nerves, but that was not a crime deserving of death. Probably. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001594361
Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001596283
Better not to think at all than to think halfway. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001597555
There's nothing at all in here," she said much later, her voice hoarse. "I'm cleaned out. Empty. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001597628
Besides being the world the kind of sadness that can not be expressed in tears. You can not explain it to anyone. Unable to take any shape, settles quietly in the bottom of the heart as snow during the windless night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001598003
Deep rivers run quiet. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001598807
Good ones like her are hard to find. And she's a lot more fragile than she looks. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001599388
Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001599421
Life: I'll never understand it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001599576
Why do people have to build such depressing places? I'm not saying that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001600387
We are not whales - and this constitutes one great theme underscoring our sex life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001600465
I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001601359
It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001602409
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001604239
Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001604908
That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001606109
The pain of having been so openly rejected was always with him. But now, like the tide, it ebbed and flowed. At times it flowed up to his feet, at other times it withdrew far away, so far away he could barely detect it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001608499
I found it inspiring that a sky could actually snow this much. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001609069
To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001610048
Pills and fortune-telling and dieting: nobody can stop her when it comes to any of those things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001610756
She was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001611342
like anyone bringing up the past." "What's the name of the song?" "'Kafka on the Shore.'" Oshima says. "'Kafka on the Shore'?" "That's correct, Kafka Tamura. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001612204
The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001612681
The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001613365
What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001613394
Becoming serious is not the same thing as approaching the truth -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001613438
Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001614039
I've just been feeling insecure since I was 20, and that's all I've been trying to express. Now the entire world is feeling insecure. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001614521
It seemed to her that almost everything she possessed had its roots sunk in that dark soil and was deriving its nourishment from it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001615123
We don't find out what's waiting for us around the next corner until we turn it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001615656
Passion can't sustain itself
forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001616257
Looking at the ocean makes me miss people, and hanging out with people makes me miss the ocean. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001616295
She gives physical presence to the depths of the human psyche. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001617607
I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a dream. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001618192
You concentrate on waiting for someone and after a certain time it hardly matters what happens anymore. It could be five years or ten years or one month. It's all the same. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001618279
In real life things don't go so smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001621497
I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001623491
I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001625564
The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical doubt, no moral complications. Probably. Unlike me. I -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001626110
Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001627169
Coltrane's labyrinthine solo plays on in my ears, never ending. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001627327
The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake ... -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001630120
This "IF" is way too big. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001630849
I was attracted to her from the first time we talked, and soon there was no turning back. For a long time she was the only thing I could think about. I tried to tell her how I felt, but somehow the feelings and the right words couldn't connect. Maybe it was for the best. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001631522
No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001632123
One person too much and freedom goes out the window. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001632253
I hadn't planned on being a teacher, but after I actually become one I discovered a deeper respect and affection for the profession than I ever imagined I'd have. More accurately, really, I should say that I happened to discover myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001632274
Hatred is like a tow-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001633110
It's amazing how completely lonely a person can be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001633130
Danger comes the moment you relax. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001633911
Have books 'happened' to you? Unless your answer to that question is 'yes,' I'm unsure how to talk to you -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001634040
People like old elephants better than sewers and fire engines. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001636017
Time flies when you're a dolt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001637776
I like the sky. You can look at it forever and never get tired of it, and when you don't want to look at it anymore, you stop. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001638161
Animals that not only move by their own free will and share feelings with people but also possess sight and hearing qualify as deserving of names. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001638773
As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001639211
What has gone forward can't go back to where it came from. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001639925
But intolerant,narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host,change form,and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001640009
I can't build a simple shelf. I have no idea how to change an oil filter on a car. I can't even stick a stamp on an envelope straight. And I'm always dialling the wrong number. But I have come up with a few original cocktails that people seem to like. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001640224
I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001640422
One of our problems was our inability to recognise and accept our own deformities. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001641264
Obviously it took much longer to come here than to go to Nagoya, but he felt no different that when he'd gone back to his hometown. Only the currency in his wallet had changed. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001641641
I thought that as long as I was with him, I would be all right. As long as I was with him, my troubles would stay away. That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001641808
- So how did you lose so much weight?
- By growing up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001641961
Even if no one would miss me, even if I left no blank space in anyone's life, even if no one noticed, I couldn't leave willingly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001642297
The book didn't come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn't have one. For me, though, having no conclusion seemed perfectly fine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001642767
Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001644665
I don't dream. Come to think of it, i haven't had any dreams in a long time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001645120
At times like this, adults need a drink -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001645209
he knew that bad premonitions have a far higher accuracy rate than good ones. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001645860
I'm a soul in transition, and a soul in transition is formless. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001645894
Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001645963
There are things in his world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001646167
How come you always like people like that -people like us, I mean? We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning -me and Kizuki and Reiko. Why can't you like more normal people? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001646269
What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001646646
Abundant talent is like a rich vein of water underground that finds all sorts of places to gush forth(..) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001646650
The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001648448
You have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001648649
My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001649950
A spider has no special skills other than building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001652686
Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001654645
In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001654709
Like a Chinese box, the world of the novel contained smaller worlds, and inside those were yet smaller worlds. Together, these worlds made up a single universe, and the universe waited there in the book to be discovered by the reader. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001656304
Some people write string quartets, some grow lettuce and tomatoes. There have to be a few who build railroad stations, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001657581
You've wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001657881
Wouldn't this be tantamount to giving a butterfly a skeleton? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001659905
He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001661250
Barney Bigard's clarinet, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001661395
To arrive at sex, you first have to undo the zip of the girl's dress. And between zip and sex lay a process in which twenty- maybe thirty- subtle decisions and judgements had to be made -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001662200
It's sometimes hard to avoid losing. Nobody's going to win all the time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001662650
Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001663661
I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001665666
However, like a piece of tracing paper slipping away, everything had, little by little, become irreparably different than it had been in the past. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001665765
If anything, my physical death would be, for me, a form of salvation, It would liberate me for ever from this hopeless prison, this pain of being me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001668506
Everything's going to work out. 'Cause remember
you're the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet, right? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001669820
Silence is not just the absence of sound: there is a sound called silence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001670361
Everything would fit neatly into one carry-on shoulder bag. He didn't even take a camera. What good were photos? What he was seeking was an actual person, and actual words. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001670828
My memory remained fixed on the dead rather than the living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001671300
I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love wit you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001671844
After that, she went silent again. It was a strained silence. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. Her period was not due yet. I imagined that something unpleasant might have happened at the office. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001672438
Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001673090
Come to think of it, she seemed awfully sure about those ten minutes: it was the first thing out of her mouth. As if nine minutes would be too short or eleven minutes too long. Like cooking spaghetti al dente. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001673669
Autonomy and dependency are like light and shade, caught in the pull of each other's gravity, until, after considerable trial and error, each individual can find his or her own place in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001673824
Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001674671
And probably is a word whose weight is incalculable. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001675349
She could not help but feel that paying money to take ownership of a living organism was inappropriate. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001676311
Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001677570
To think that each skull once had skin and flesh and was stuffed with gray matter - in varying quantities - teeming with thoughts of food and sex and dominance. All now vanished. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001677765
I like to read books. I like to listen to music. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001678928
All he knew was that he was now a human whose name was Gregor Samsa. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001679352
I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001679732
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001680089
Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001680303
The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed - your self. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001681388
look at the painting and listen to the wind -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001682207
No one noticed that I had changed- that I had given up sleep entirely, that I was spending all my time reading, that my mind was someplace a hundred years - and hundreds of miles - from reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001682819
The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001682925
this religion's substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message. Some people might find that cool. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001682997
I was 20 myself. Once upon a time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001684894
It's not easy, either psychologically or practically, to keep tweaking the truth to make it all fit together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001685325
A friend to kill time is a friend sublime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001685403
But still, his sudden absence doesn't seem to have inconvenienced anybody. The world just keeps moving along. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001686161
Crying is personal. On the other hand, laughing is more general . Laughing makes our hearts wider. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001687250
After a certain length of time has passed, things harden up. Like a cement hardening in a bucket. And we can't go back anymore -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001687301
Seeming utterly fragile and vulnerable, the silhouette pulsed almost imperceptibly with the beating of her heart or the motions of her inner heart, as if she were whispering soundless words to the darkness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001687445
I think he wants to have a different personality to be somebody different from who he's been up till now -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001687586
It was a senseless, evil thing to do. Still, evil like that is everywhere in this world, mountains of it. I can't understand it, you can't understand it. But it's there, no question. You could say we're surrounded by it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001688044
As Duke Ellington once said, "There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind." In that sense, jazz and classical music are fundamentally the same. The pure joy one experiences listening to "good" music transcends questions of genre. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001688124
She was seriously in love, but she never made demands. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001688232
We create the story, and at the same time, the story is what sets us in motion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001689073
There is no one in this world who can't be replaced. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001690298
The world is like a great big overcoat, and it needs pockets of various shapes and sizes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001690476
When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. 'Mythomania' is the word for it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001691089
I don't know what it means to live. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001691259
Why are we talking about this?" Tsukuru said, half to himself, trying to sound upbeat. "I've never talked to anybody about this before, and never planned to." Sara smiled faintly. "Maybe you needed to talk with somebody. More than you ever imagined. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001691476
You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001692997
The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001693781
Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001694274
When you're always scheming about ways to make money, it's like a part of you is lost. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001694275
It doesnt happen very often, but sometimes, before i even realize what's going on, there i am - naked and defenseless and totally confused -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001694276
It was simply one of those things that remain as an "exceptional but interesting" episode in life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001694277
a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001695230
There's that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it's gone. And when you hate yourself, you feel like spending money. Except there's no money left. And no hope. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001696138
One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001696272
It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001696326
the bakery attack. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001696655
I'm just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001697537
She had something she needed to talk about, but if she actually put it into words, the facts contained in the "something" might irretrievably become more definite *as* facts, so she wanted to postpone that moment, if only briefly. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001699728
Sex is an extremely subtle undertaking, unlike going to the department store on a Sunday to buy a thermos. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001699806
I suppose if there is to be some judgement after death, a god will be the one to judge me, but it doesn't frighten me in the least. I did nothing wrong. I reserve the right to declare the justice of my case in anyone's presence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001700099
I spend more time being confused than not, I answered. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001700409
Everything we had built up came crashing down. In one split second, everything turned into nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001700684
There is no such thing as a safe place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001700731
The early autumn sun glinted on the water, an enormous mirror ground to powder and scattered. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001700955
The whole world is a farce, needless to say. Who can escape that? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001701225
Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001701425
In the end we all die anyway. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001701637
Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001701645
People naturally pay their respects to the dead. The person had, after all, just accomplished the personal, profound feat of dying. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001701836
Because, Mr.. Katagiri, Tokyo can only be saved by a person like you. And it's for people like you that I am trying to save Tokyo. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001702159
It was far too hot to think about complicated matters. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001702438
You're thinking about how it's morning now or night and the next thing you know, you're old. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001702501
Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001702685
You can hide as cleverly as you like, but in the final analysis mimicry is deception, pure and simple. It doesn't solve a thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001702788
For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001703044
one day she'll wake up like nothing ever happened, and everything'll go back to normal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001703692
Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001705762
This is pretty obvious, but until things happen, they haven't happened. And often things aren't what they seem. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001706363
We do not hold that doctrine gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings come first. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001707015
The sky was a fresh-swept blue, with only a trace of white cloud clinging to the dome of heaven like a thin streak of test paint -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001707079
Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001707474
That as individuals each of us is extremely isolated, while at the same time we are all linked by a prototypical memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001707856
Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn't get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can't figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001707997
Unsure where she was to find a purpose or meaning to her life, she passed one formless day after another. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001708368
Sometimes, I imagine how great it would be if we could live our lives without bothering other people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001709761
It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take. (p. 318). -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001710324
I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001711238
Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001711649
In the darkness, I returned to that small world of hers. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001711895
I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001713202
Everything. Things you lost. Things you're gonna lose. Everything. Here's where it all ties together. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001715115
I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it - A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001715162
Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001716045
Everything just blows me away. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001717071
Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001719229
This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001719351
Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of a part of themselves. It's a crime. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001719795
Sound is of no use to human evolution. in fact, it gets in the way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001719839
Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001721620
I love music, but I can't sing a note. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001722601
But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001722869
A gust of wind set the leaves of grass to dancing and celebrated the grass's song before it died. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001724703
You could be anybody when you're writing. That's the reason that I'm writing: to be anybody. You can put your feet in various shoes and experience anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001725179
With civilization comes communication, he said. Whatever can't be expressed might as well not exist. Nil, nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001726019
If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001726096
This place is too calm, too natural
too complete. I don't deserve it. At least not yet. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001727031
She was short, and even in a good mood she talked like she was half a step away from picking a fight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001727345
You're afraid of imagination and even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the resposibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep and dreams are a part of sleep. When you're awake you can suppress imagination but you can't supress dreams. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001728567
Never let fear and stupid pride make you lose someone who's precious to you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001729703
I feel as if the world is listening for my next thought. But I can't think of anything. Sorry, but I just can't think of anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001730220
He considered using the time to think, but he couldn't think of anything to think about. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001731231
It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001732242
It's true that at the time I was fond of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and it was from them that I learned about this kind of simple, swift-paced style, but the main reason for the style of my first novel is that I simply did not have the time to write sustained prose. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001732568
It was like a tight knot inside me was gradually loosening, a knot I'd never even realized, until then, was there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001734541
I'm all through as a human being," she said. "All you're looking at is the lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I'm just functioning by rote memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001734627
The past became a long, razor-sharp skewer that stabbed right through his heart. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001735672
My shadow is only half of what it should be."
"Everyone has their shortcomings. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001736460
If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001736553
When I was with him, I felt as if my life had finally come back to me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001736947
People don't always send messages in order to communicate the truth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001736959
I think it's an amazing achievement to find even one specific thing that you're interested in. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001739096
Needless to say, the manufacture of elephants is no easy matter. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001740434
When you start at zero, you've got a lot to learn. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001741285
Money was not a living thing. It wouldn't run off anywhere if he left it alone. Probably. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001741536
Aren't you a little young to be, like, the voice of wisdom or something? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001741624
Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001741864
After all this, I won't start to hate you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001742183
What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001742720
The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001744437
An imperfect person living an imperfect, limited life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001746141
We weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001747329
She looks clumsy, beautiful. It's a beauty that could pierce the most delicate regions of the heart of the viewer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001747670
The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001748708
And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001750275
I'm human, after all. I was hurt. But whether it was a lot or a little I can't say. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001751117
Little by little, I would get snared by the world out there. This was the first step; first I say yes to this, then later on it'll be something else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001751926
I can read the two of you as easily as I can a watermelon patch in broad daylight. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001753783
There's nothing left here. Not one thing left for you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001754454
Even now that feeling would sometimes spring up. The sense of leaving himself. Of observing his own pain as if it were not his own. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001754762
Life is like a box of cookies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001754826
Ushikawa preferred a world where smells and pain still existed, even if smells and pain were unendurable. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001754942
For a fifteen-year-old who doesn't even shave yet, you're sure carrying a lot of baggage around. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001755258
The two of us are linked together by the heavy bonds of silence that pass through the wall seperating our two worlds. We need each other more than anything, I feel without a doubt. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001756305
Person A understand Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001758201
I'm getting to the age where you really do get only what you pay for. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001759705
There are certain thoughts that, no matter what, you have to keep inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001759906
The warmth and the pain came as a pair, and unless he accepted the pain, he wouldn't feel the warmth. It was a kind of trade off. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001760066
Once you start lying to the public, you have to keep lying. It never ends. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001760428
Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist - in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that's what I did. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001760899
And in the midst of this, i waited for something to happen. Something must happen, I felt sure. It can't end like this. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001764019
They weren't fact. They were possibility. Nothing more, nothing less, but the force of the possibility was shattering. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001765084
It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001765085
People with dark hearts have dark dreams. Those whose hearts are even darker can't dream at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001765086
Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001765731
What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001765803
The Sabres were great planes. Except they dropped napalm. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001766415
I am, indeed, pure Frog, but at the same time I am a thing that stands for a world of un-Frog. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001767402
Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001767618
I just wanted to go home. Take a quick bath, have a beer, and sink into my warm bed with my cigarettes and Kant. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001768572
As long as I'm alive, I can think what I want, when I want, any way I want, as much as I want, and nobody can tell me any different -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001768780
He was stymied, unable to go forward, unable to go back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001769262
Solitude is an inevitable circumstance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001769761
Look, the world is an inherently unfair place. I didn't write the rules. It's always been that way. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001769762
The world is an inherently unfair place. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001770095
Her eyes were narrow, but when she really looked at something they suddenly opened wide: two dark eyes, never timid, brimming with curiosity. He -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001770296
You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001770888
In a world of time, nothing can go back to the way it was. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001771465
Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001771767
Beast did have one major purpose. That much I do know. A monumental plan to transform humanity and the human world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001771783
But the silence spoke volumes. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001772054
We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we're surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001772200
Just a lingering memory. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001772333
I just wanted to be alone for a while some place other than my house. Until morning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001772509
As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001774223
The world of the living was obscene. I was powerless to do anything. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001774277
It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001775235
His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001776111
Of course you keep telling yourself there's something to be learned from everything, and growing old shouldn't be that hard. That's the general drift. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001776347
Whenever I wake up in a strange house I always feel as if the wrong soul got stuffed into the wrong body. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001776863
People change, though, don't you think?" Hatsumi asked. "You mean, like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001778381
All right, then, I thought: here I am in the bottom of a well. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001778723
He was glad to be human. For sure, it was a great inconvenience to have to walk on two legs and wear clothes. There were so many things he didn't know. Yet had he been a fish or a sunflower, and not a human being, he might never have experienced this emotion. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001778749
I try imagining myself in forty years, but it's like trying to picture what lies beyond the universe. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001779364
My imagination is a kind of animal. So what I do is keep it alive -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001780759
Even after the ringing stopped, the sound of the bell lingered through the evening gloom like the dust floating in the air. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001781002
When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001781817
They were people who had no doubt whatsoever that the more narrow-minded they became, the closer they got to heaven. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001782239
A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001782813
She didn't seem to care one way or another. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001782827
Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001784397
The building itself almost appeared to be holding its breath. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001785014
Each day was a carbon copy of the last. You needed a bookmark to tell one from the other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001785404
When that girl left, she left behind this void. No, maybe not. Maybe she just showed me something that was already there, inside me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001785615
What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001785833
Beginnings are always like this. One minute everything exists, the next minute everything is lost. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001786788
Is it against the law for me to know it? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001787035
My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. Inside me is the un-me -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001788245
If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa's clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001788355
By living our lives, we nurture death. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001788549
Even so, everything was ever so slightly off, as if little by little the tracing paper had slipped irretrievably from the lines of summers past. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001789334
Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001790129
The more honest I try to be, the more the right words recede into the distance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001790623
Head-on. With unwavering conviction and ruthlessness. Aomame -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001791853
I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the question to myself: "Where am I?" As if I didn't know: I'm here. In my life. A feature of the world that is my existence. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001792045
A smile like a small wisp of smoke drifting quietly skyward on a windless day. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001792387
For every theory there has to be counterevidence
otherwise science wouldn't progress. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001792806
There's always only one reality. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001793524
Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001794044
I nodded and sipped my beer. "That's about the size of it," I said. That was about the size of it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001794048
If you want to take those feelings and smash somebody with them, smash me. Then we can understand each other. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001794893
But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?"
"Word games," I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001795181
What most moved me in his letter was the sense of frustration that permeated the lieutenent's words: the frustration of never quite being able to depict or explain anything to his full satisfaction. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001796460
When it's raining like this, it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001796466
And when it was all over, the king and his retainers burst out laughing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001796876
He had sorted screws of different sizes into clean white trays. They looked so happy. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001797157
[ ... ] Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001797953
If writers only wrote about things everybody knew, what the hell would be the point of writing? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001798489
You have to make an effort to always look at the good side, always think about the good things. Then you've got nothing to be afraid of. If something bad comes up, you do more thinking at that point. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001798758
An old cat is a good friend to talk to. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001799844
It's not so easy for people to end their own lives. It's not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it's all over, they're dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001800070
The pain I imagine is worse than the actual pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001800084
Whatever is the loss becomes greater each time we meet. It is a well that will never be filled. It is dark, unbearably so. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001800229
We're talking about people, not common denominators. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001800691
In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001800777
It took me an eternity to get through the toast, which tasted like lint and was gray from the sky. The sky foretold the end of the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001801167
Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001801537
What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001802124
May the life you lead be a good one, a life free of regrets. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001802396
I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001804754
You let something out of the bag before yourself knew what it was all about -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001805156
A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001805219
She performed a few Bacharach songs next: "Close to You," "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," "Walk On By," plus Laura Nyro's "Wedding Bell Blues. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001806990
People are weak when they are alone. (Haruki Murakami) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001807739
the mind is lost when the shadow dies. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001808030
I move, therefore I am. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001808093
The loudest sigh in the world would never wake him up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001808381
Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001809324
Silence wove itself into the spaces of everything around us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001809607
I had seen stars in such numbers that they filled the sky. It almost seemed as if the sky would break under the weight of all those things and come tumbling down. Never had I seen such an amazing skyful of stars. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001809813
It doesn't matter how old I get, but as long as I continue to live I'll always discover something new about myself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001809885
The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001809886
Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001810290
Darkness had spread over my skin like ink. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001811365
There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001811650
If you never noticed, it never happened. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001812555
her flesh no longer existed in this world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001813422
To share the joy of that conceptual freedom with someone was a wonderful thing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814248
Exactly. When is comes to anything halfway important, you just don't get it. It's amazing to me that you can put a piece of fiction together'
'Yeah, well, that's a whole different thing.'
(from Honey Pie) -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814406
Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owned it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814571
A hotel is serious business. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814610
I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814709
Enough with these stupid metaphors. They don't do any good. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001814753
For a few seconds I stood there in a strange, dim place. Where the things I could see didn't exist. Where the invisible did. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001815802
If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001816950
The Ainu youth came upon a band of Ainu hunters passing through the area. "What is this area called?" he asked them.
"Do you really think this asshole of a terrain even deserves a name?" they replied. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001817322
That's how it is with art. Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning are incapable of such writing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001818317
Cold or not, God is Present -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001819031
If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001819034
I am a lumberjack... I can never manage to be a chic. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001820665
Everybody's got something weird about them, I said. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001822031
I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001822469
What do I like about math? , When I've got figures in front of me, it relaxes me. Kind of like, everything fits where it belongs. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001823926
Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001824619
Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001824888
Whether you want to or not. But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That's the rule. It can never be exactly the same." A -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001826119
Her warm breath, her cheeks wet with tears. All the lost possibilities, all the time that was never to return. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001826165
The ache in his heart returned. Not an intense pain, but the memory of intense pain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001826880
She imagined his hands, large and warm. Strong, but surely gentle. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001826995
There are many things we only see
clearly in retrospect. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001827193
In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001827399
Turning all this over in my mind, I started to imagine another me somewhere, sitting in a bar, nursing a whiskey, without a care in the world. The more I thought about it, the more that other me became the real me, making this me here not real at all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001828217
Seabird tracks scattered about the surf's edge like pine needles after a brisk wind. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001828240
A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001828275
Turn a corner and you know you're already there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001828835
No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001828871
I never made any plan before writing, however I succeeded. I enjoyed writing with excitement ,"what happen on the next page?" -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001829027
Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves. Neither of us is able to feel any interest in anything other than what we ourselves think or feel or do. That's why we can think about things in a way that's totally divorced from anybody else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001829331
Are you asking because you really want an answer? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001829812
What kind of authors do you like? I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001830722
Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001831287
Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr Wind-up Bird? They're nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001831628
That's what we all do: endlessly take the long way around. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001831898
It's as if you'd gambled away almost all your money and decided, What the hell, I'll bet what's left -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001832596
To be honest, I almost never use the dictionary. I just don't like dictionaries. I don't like the way they look, and I don't like what they say inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001833947
Up till a minute ago it felt so real, but now it seems imaginary. Just a few steps is all it takes for everything associated with it to lose all sense of reality. And me
the person who was there until a moment ago
now I seem imaginary too. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001834311
Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001835456
Most people probably didn't think I'd make it as a professional writer. But I couldn't follow their advice. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001835969
Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001837390
Even if you don't acknowledge it, people die, and guys sleep with girls. That's just how it is. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001837557
With luck, it might even snow for us. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001837838
I'm not very good at giving anyone a clear no. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001838040
She took her coat off as if it had only now occurred to her to do so. She emerged from it like an insect sloughing off its skin. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001838597
I may have nothing inside me, but what would something be? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001838665
I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn't have to write for my living. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001839269
Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001839774
Writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness."
-from "Hear the Wind Sing -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001839819
Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001839978
There is always, as I said, only one reality, -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001840642
For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001840806
I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001840949
At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes the past. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001840967
The only way to understand what's really fair is to take a long-range view of things. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001841110
It's a terrible thing when a person dies, whatever the circumstances. A hole opens up in the world, and we need to pay the proper respects. If we don't, the hole will never be filled in again. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001842471
A person's destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001842827
It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001843536
Ask whatever questions you want, but remember, I may not answer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001843837
Miracles are the devil's temptations. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001844540
Ceilings weren't put on rooms to amuse people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001844556
We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001845282
I think most people live in fiction ... That's how you keep your fragile body intact. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001845561
All my books are weird love stories. I love weird love stories. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001845813
The worst thoughts usually strike in the dead of the night. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001846588
Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001847344
You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001848085
Let the world move along as it pleased. If it had any business with him, it would be sure to tell him. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001848423
There is no 'why' in a world that would be perfect in itself. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001848810
Once again, she asked me what I meant. And again, my heart was in my words, but the explanation made no sense. Typical me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001849083
The girl was rotten inside. Peel off a layer of that beautiful skin, and you'd find nothing but rotten flesh. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001850032
It made me wonder how other people saw me. Not that I had any way of knowing, of course. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001850613
But if I'm with you, I'm not afraid. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001851410
Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001851792
But she got it wrong. What I imagine is perhaps very important. For the entire world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001851830
We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001855207
The world is full of incomprehensible words -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001855813
We never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001856117
Telling people her name was always a bother. As soon as the name left her lips, the other person looked puzzled or confused. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001856479
Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001857371
A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001858048
Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001858748
Kindness was one of the things presently (or permanently) in short supply in the world. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001859136
After such prolonged frowning, it took her some moments to recall what her normal face even looked like, but after several attempts she was able to settle on a reasonable facsimile. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001860472
I knew I'd be all right, I'd be safe with you there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001861162
That's what the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001861432
Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001863002
No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001863596
We were all getting old. That much was as plain as the falling rain. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001863734
There was nothing I could say, so I said nothing. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001864087
There are times when the understanding does not come until later, when it no longer matters. Other times I do what I must do, not knowing my own mind, and I am led astray. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001864708
Only the Dead stay seventeen forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001865149
So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001865312
No place has everything you need. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001865446
Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001866341
The blood must have already, in its own silent way, seeped inside. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001866914
Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001867089
Ever since I was little my mother had told me, if you don't know something, go to the library and look it up. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001867159
They just keep doing the same things," I said.
"Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things." She had a point there. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001867672
Sitting on a sofa that smelled like an earlier era -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001867864
A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001868609
I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001868741
You make do with what you have. As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001869230
Don't let the bad elves get you. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001869588
What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001870512
Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001870613
Only the dead stay 17 forever. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001870793
I may not be the most likable person in the world, but I try not to upset people. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001870804
How you think and feel's always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even. p.498 -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001871489
The most important things aren't decided by percentages. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001871651
I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001872603
Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding? -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001873067
Love songs sweet enough to rot your teeth. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001873830
Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001874554
Whenever I get into something, I shut out everything else. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001875579
I read somewhere that how we shave in the morning has its own philosophy, too. Otherwise, we couldn't survive. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001876350
Just before reaching the station, he turned into a bar -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001877215
Being a bird, I imagined, must be wonderful. All birds had to do was fly. no need to worry about contraception. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001877651
It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001877998
Sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001878696
Soon, she began to sense that the night sky she saw above her was somehow different from the sky she was used to see. The strangeness of it was subtle but undeniable. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001878751
He lived in his own special hell -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001878922
But no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will
to communicate, there's no connection. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879161
I don't think we should judge the value of our lives by how efficient they are. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879236
People grow up, and when they grow up they change/ -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879261
The heart apparently doesn't stop that easily. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879428
I don't know what kind of life you had, what strong>sstrong>ortstrong>sstrong> of joystrong>sstrong> and strong>sstrong>orrowstrong>sstrong> you experienced. But even if there wastrong>sstrong> strong>sstrong>omething that left you unfulfilled, you can't go around strong>sstrong>eeking it at other people'strong>sstrong> doorstrong>sstrong>. Even if it istrong>sstrong> at the place you're mostrong>sstrong>t familiar with, and the strong>sstrong>ort of act that istrong>sstrong> your forte. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879575
Before I know it another month will be over. And a very harsh season is just around the corner. -- Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami Quotes : pic 001879591
Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all. -- Haruki Murakami