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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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When I was fifteen, all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody’s reach. A place beyond the flow of time.” - But there’s no place like that in this world. - Exactly. Which is why I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break.
Haruki Murakami
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You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.
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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Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong, to become part of something. To have someone cry for me.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
Haruki Murakami
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You're not a kid any more. 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
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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
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You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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
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The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... But we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.
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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That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.
Haruki Murakami
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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
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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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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
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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
