Haruki Murakami Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.
-
But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?
-
...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
-
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.
-
You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?
-
My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.
-
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.
-
Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.
-
She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.
-
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.
-
For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient.
-
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.
-
I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel.
-
They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?
-
What’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it.
-
It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.
-
I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.
-
A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over.
-
Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.