Haruki Murakami Quotes
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The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.
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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.
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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.
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Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.
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Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes.
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What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.
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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.
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They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.
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But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution.
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Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?
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It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take.
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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.
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The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell.
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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.
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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.
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Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.
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Reading 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. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent all my time in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stack-up loner.
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I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.
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The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.