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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 -
Everything, everything seemed once-upon-a-time.
Haruki Murakami
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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 -
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg." Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
Haruki Murakami -
Letters are just pieces of paper. Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.
Haruki Murakami -
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 -
What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.
Haruki Murakami -
Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.... We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-- from a time before good and evil even existed, when people's minds were still benighted.
Haruki Murakami
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When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.
Haruki Murakami -
Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.
Haruki Murakami -
Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system.
Haruki Murakami -
I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.
Haruki Murakami -
Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.
Haruki Murakami -
People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love.
Haruki Murakami
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There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.
Haruki Murakami -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?
Haruki Murakami -
There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.
Haruki Murakami
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Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.
Haruki Murakami -
Killing time is not an easy job.
Haruki Murakami -
Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.
Haruki Murakami -
Listen. I may not be much, but I'm all I've got. Maybe you need a magnifying glass to find my face in my high school graduation photo. Maybe I haven't got any family or friends. Yes, yes, I know all that. But, strange as it might seem, I'm not entirely dissatisfied with life... I feel pretty much at home with what I am. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want any unicorns behind fences.
Haruki Murakami