Quotes by Haruki Murakami (Page 3 of 5)

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?
Longer Version:
Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

Share... | See all 4 versions
Sometimes I feel so- I don't know -- lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going' Like a little lost Sputnik?' I guess so.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It is my huge pleasure that my novels are translated into languages that are read among small numbers of people.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I think I'll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what's going to happen. I can still die after that -- it won't be too late. Probably.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's a terrible thing when a person dies, whatever the circumstances. A hole opens up in the world, and we need to pay the proper respects. If we don't, the hole will never be filled in again.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn't last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

Share... | See all 3 versions
You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into -- the good restaurant or the awful one.

Share... | See all 3 versions
When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

Share... | See all 3 versions
You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this. I believe you, she whispers after a moment. Please find my mind.

Share... | See all 3 versions
I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.

Share... | See all 16 versions
As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.

Share... | See all 4 versions
Where was i now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.

Share... | See all 3 versions
Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!

Share... | See all 3 versions
With the advent of winter, her eyes seemed to take on a greater transparency, a transparency that lead nowhere. Occassionally, for no particular reason, Naoko would gaze into my eyes as if searching for something. Each time I was filled with odd sensations of lonliness and inadequecy.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least.

Share... | See all 16 versions
What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.

Share... | See all 7 versions
That's all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out -- so far out you can't follow them all the way to the end.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Narratives have the same power, I think. Some readers of my novels ask me, Why do you understand me? That's a huge pleasure of mine because it means that readers and I can make our narratives relative.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Person A understand Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.

Share... | See all 16 versions
This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I've somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart.

Share... | See all 16 versions
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.

Share... | See all 16 versions
This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope.

Share... | See all 9 versions
One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I'm going to take you out of here ... I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.

Share... | See all 3 versions
You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world.

Share... | See all 16 versions
If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down.

Share... | See all 9 versions
What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?...the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It is a lonely life sometimes, like throwing a stone into the deep darkness. It might hit something, but you can't see it. The only thing you can do is to guess, and to believe.

Share... | See all 3 versions
He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out.

Share... | See all 16 versions
We heard no other sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.

Share... | See all 3 versions
Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on, living alone down there in the darkness.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Tengo could hardly believe it -- that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two people's hearts -- a boy's and a girl's -- could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn't seen each other for twenty years.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize -- no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere.

Share... | See all 16 versions
In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster.

Share... | See all 16 versions
What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where -- at a special time and place -- imagination had been set free.

Share... | See all 16 versions
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.

Share... | See all 16 versions
As I already explaned, I don't have any form. I'm a conceptual metaphysical object.

Share... | See all 4 versions
You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else.

Share... | See all 4 versions
You need to come face-to-face with the past, not as some naive, easily wounded boy, but as a grown-up, independent professional. Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see. Otherwise you'll carry around that baggage for the rest of your life.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

Share... | See all 12 versions
Not that running away's going to solve everything. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can't even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.

Share... | See all 4 versions
Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free?

Share... | See all 4 versions
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.

Share... | See all 16 versions
This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.

Share... | See all 16 versions
A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I hate requests. They make me feel unhappy. It's like when I take a book out of the library. As soon as I start to read it, all I can think about is when I'll finish it.

Share... | See all 16 versions
That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The real world--where I probably could never be happy, and never get anywhere.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.

Share... | See all 3 versions
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.

Share... | See all 9 versions
I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world.

Share... | See all 3 versions
Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going--people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.

Share... | See all 16 versions
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.
Longer Version:
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. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009).

Share... | See all 16 versions
I don't know -- maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other it's all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin.

Share... | See all 7 versions
I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up.

Share... | See all 21 versions
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.
Longer Version:
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.

Share... | See all 16 versions
This was the second stage in my life, a step in my personal evolution -- abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal... Gradually I drew nearer to the world, and the world drew nearer to me.

Share... | See all 16 versions
You've already decided what you're going to do, and all that's left is to set the wheels in motion. I mean, it's your life. Basically, you gotta go with what you think is right.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical.

Share... | See all 9 versions
The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.

Share... | See all 16 versions
They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves.

Share... | See all 16 versions
My shadow is only half of what it should be.
Everyone has their shortcomings.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.

Share... | See all 3 versions
I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else.I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality.

Share... | See all 16 versions
People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.

Share... | See all 4 versions
It might not be perfect, but the fundamental stance I adopted with regard to my home was to accept it, problems and all, because it was something I myself had chosen. If it had problems, these were almost certainly problems that had originated within me.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

Share... | See all 16 versions
When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.

Share... | See all 16 versions
As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.

Share... | See all 4 versions
If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a
very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

Share... | See all 8 versions
That's good. I was worried. Of course, I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. I'd hate to think they were obvious to anybody else. Especially at the swimming pool in the summer.

Share... | See all 3 versions
I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Nakata's empty inside... Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much ... But when I write, I write weird. That's very strange. When I'm getting more and more serious, I'm getting more and more weird.

Share... | See all 16 versions
What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

Share... | See all 3 versions
An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions -- excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear -- that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

Share... | See all 16 versions
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.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

Share... | See all 16 versions
People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restrictsyour thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Share... | See all 16 versions
No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.

Share... | See all 16 versions
The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.

Share... | See all 16 versions
You know, the usual story. Once upon a time I was playing my harp by a spring when a fairy appeared out of nowhere, handed me a Beretta Model 92, and told me to shoot the white rabbit over there for target practice.

Share... | See all 16 versions
I could feel her breasts up against my stomach. I wanted a beer real bad.

Share... | See all 16 versions
It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.

Share... | See all 16 versions
Just because there's an end doesn't mean existence has meaning. An end point is simply set up as a temporary marker, or perhaps as an indirect metaphor for the fleeting nature of existence.
Quotes by Haruki Murakami are featured in:
Courage Quotes
Depression Quotes
Money Quotes
Nature Quotes
War Quotes
Happy Quotes
Love Quotes
Self-Discovery Quotes