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A theory is a battlefield in your head.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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Once she was out of the car and gone, my world was suddenly hollow and meaningless.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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There's no war that will end all wars.
Haruki Murakami
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Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.
Haruki Murakami
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The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that sunlight was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings on the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact.
Haruki Murakami
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Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.
Haruki Murakami
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Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.
Haruki Murakami
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We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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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
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Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.
Haruki Murakami
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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
