Haruki Murakami Quotes
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Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.
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Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.
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And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.
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There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.
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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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That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.
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You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.
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Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life.
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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’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.
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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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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.
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No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.
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The best point of my novels, I think, is their humor. I want to keep many my works humorous.
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Let the world move along as it pleased. If it had any business with him, it would be sure to tell him.
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I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works.
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What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.
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I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.
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Whenever I get into something, I shut out everything else.
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People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.
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We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.
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For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient.
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It's basically impossible for everybody's justice to prevail or everybody's happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over.
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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.