Haruki Murakami Quotes
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My father always told me: 'Give somebody a hand and he'll take an arm.
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Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.
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It is my huge pleasure that my novels are translated into languages that are read among small numbers of people.
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Where are you now?’ Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.
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Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality!
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You always look so cool, like no matter what happens, it’s got nothing to do with you, but you’re not really like that. In your own way, you’re out there fighting as hard as you can, even if other people can’t tell by looking at you.
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Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
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Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.
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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.
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One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.
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Passion can’t sustain itself forever.
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What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?...the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.
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A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully.
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The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.
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She was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.
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I learned that realism can come in all shapes and sizes. The world is big enough for different values to coexist.
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Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.
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Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?
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When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
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Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.
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I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.
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I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.
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Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you.
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Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.