Haruki Murakami quotes
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“A friend to kill time is a friend sublime.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I probably still haven’t completely adapted to the world. I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t the real world. The people, the scene: they just don’t seem real to me.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Sometimes I find it too hot to run, and sometimes too cold. Or too cloudy. But I still go running. I know that if I didn't go running, I wouldn't go the next day either. It's not in human nature to take unnecessary burdens upon oneself, so one's body soon becomes disaccustomed. It mustn't do that. It's the same with writing. I write every day so that my mind doesn't become disaccustomed.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Running taught me to have faith in my skills as a writer. I learned how much I can demand of myself, when I need a break, and when the break starts to get too long. I known how hard I am allowed to push myself.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 09, 2015
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“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, 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. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 05, 2012
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“Let me just tell you this, Watanabe," said Midori, pressing her cheek against my neck. "I'm a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing through my veins. You're holding me in your arms and I'm telling you that I love you. I'm ready to do anything you tell me to do. I may be a little bit mad, but I'm a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I'm kind of cute, I have nice boobs, I'm a good cook, and my father left me a trust fund. I mean, I'm a real bargain, don't you think? If you don't take me, I'll end up going somewhere else.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Aug 05, 2011
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“I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Each individual has their own unique color, which shines faintly around the contours of their body. Like a halo. Or a backlight. I'm able to see those colors clearly.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Apr 25, 2016
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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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 12, 2011
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“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only ***** do that.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on 'What would happen to the world if there was no friction?' Answer: 'Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.' That was my mood.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough." "Waiting for perfect love?" "No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : Haruki Murakami (2011). “After The Quake”, p.10, Random House
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“The world is an inherently unfair place.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“He felt as if his heart had dried up. I needed her he thought. I needed someone like her to fill the void inside me. But I wasn’t able to fill the void inside her. Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 06, 2016
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“I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
-- Haruki MurakamiSource : Murakami Haruki, (2012). “L'arte di correre”, p.8, Giulio Einaudi Editore
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“Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“No matter where i go, i still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but i'm still the same incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that i can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as i'll come to defining myself.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“I don't know, there's something about you. Say there's an hourglass: the sand's about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Distance might not solve anything, no matter how far you run.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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“Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“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.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“There are three ways you can get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she's wearing; and three, treat her to really good food...If you do all that and still don't get the results you want, better give up.”
-- Haruki Murakami -
“Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?”
-- Haruki Murakami -
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