Haruki Murakami Quotes

People think of all kinds of things at three in the morning. We all do. That's why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off.

it's a fine moon', she repeated

I feel as if the world is listening for my next thought. But I can't think of anything. Sorry, but I just can't think of anything.

There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.

Don't forget - you're the one who swam across the freezing sea at night.

I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials.

I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow

I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.

Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields. Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness

The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter

History cannot be erased or altered.Because that would mean killing yourself.

people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is guess from what comes floating to the surface every once in a while

I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept.

Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.

You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can’t erase the history that produced them

But thing in the past are like plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?

If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.

suffering is a misunderstood pain

I'm going to live to be twenty-five, ' she said, 'then die.

Her words didn’t have the acrid smell of death.

There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.

I'm safe inside this container called me.

What happens when people open their hearts?""They get better.

...somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected.

In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible.

There was a time when my soul was wandering through the deepest darkness…

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction.

To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to escape from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them.

If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.

It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.

We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all.

Wasn't much of a life anyway. Wasn't much of a brain.""But didn't you say you were satisfied with your life?""Word games, " I dismissed. "Every army needs a flag.

Sad hotels existed everywhere, to be sure, but the Dolphin was in a class of its own. The Dolphin Hotel was conceptually sorry. The Dolphin Hotel was tragic.

When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person that walked in. That's what the storm is all about.

Its Barnum & Bailey world just as phony as it can be, But it would't be make-believe if you believed in me

As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express.

Each "way of thinking" has its own shape and color, which wax and wane like the moon.

Hatred is like a tow-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself.

Once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality.

People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile.

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.

There are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.

I wasn’t able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we’d done the buttons up wrong.

All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.

He decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further.

The silence is so deep it hurts our ears

A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.

It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one’s hearing to it.....The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself.

I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.