Haruki Murakami Quotes
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You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.
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I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky.
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Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.
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And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them.
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Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
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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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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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So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.
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Learning another language is like becoming another person.
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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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My heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and waiting for it to pass. And it would pass -- but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.
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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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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.
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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.
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I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.
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Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.
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You make do with what you have. As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have.
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The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.
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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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Confidence; as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.
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But still," Ayumi said, "it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness." "You may be right," Aomame said, "But it's too late to trade it in for another one.
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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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That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.
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Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.