Haruki Murakami Quotes
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A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.
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Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.
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Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?
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You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?
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Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.
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Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.
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I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky.
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Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?
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It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.
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I was confident that I was a special person. But time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received. I have only just learned that truth.
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There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
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I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.
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The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
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If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe # running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.
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Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.
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In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.
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You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.
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In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.
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By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical. First there came the action of running, and accompanying it there was this entity known as me. I run; therefore I am.
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Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.
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The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.
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Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.
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It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.
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Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished.