Haruki Murakami Quotes
-
I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.
-
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.
-
Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
-
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.
-
Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.
-
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.
-
When you see runners in town is easy to distinguish beginners from veterans. The ones panting are beginners; the ones with quiet, measured breathing are the veterans. Their hearts, lost in thought, slowly tick away time. When we pass each other on the road, we listen to the rhythm of each other's breathing, and sense the way the other person is ticking away the moments.
-
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.
-
I've never met a girl who thinks like you." "A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything is such a pain!
-
You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.
-
What's nurtured slowly grows well.
-
There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.
-
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.
-
We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.
-
An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.
-
In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There's no war that will end all wars.
-
Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.
-
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.
-
"I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough." "Waiting for perfect love?" "No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for."
-
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.
-
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.