Haruki Murakami Quotes
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Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
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It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.
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I like to read books. I like to listen to music.
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I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.
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It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.
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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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If a person remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but it’s like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It’s hard to go back to the original shape.
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People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.
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You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.
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Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose," began the man. "You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed.
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I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you realize.
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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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Possibilities are like cancer. The more I think about them, the more they multiply, and there's no way to stop them. I'm out of control.
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I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.
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Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.
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Can't trust people. Won't do any good. They'll kill you everytime. They'll kill eachother. They'll kill everyone.
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If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
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The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.
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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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In order to pin down reality as realilty, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist.
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I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. so when I do get turned on, I don’t trust it, I have to investigate the source.
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No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.
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Adults need more complex narratives. They have their own narratives. The main characters are themselves.
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What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.