Haruki Murakami Quotes
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The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape.
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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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I like to read books. I like to listen to music.
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The worst thoughts usually strike in the dead of the night.
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Please remember: things are not what they seem.
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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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Strong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.
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Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.
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Is this what it means to go back to square one? Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life.
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Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man?
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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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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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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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It's true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night," the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. "You can't fight it.
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I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.
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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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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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I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you realize.
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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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As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.
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In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.
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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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It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could the dog possibly be looking at?
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Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.