Haruki Murakami Quotes

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?

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.

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.

The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.

Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.

It feels good to think about you when I'm warm in bed. I feel as if you're curled up there beside me, fast asleep. And I think how great it would be if it were true.

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.

All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.

The world is an inherently unfair place.

Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion

Understanding' is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings.

Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

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.

I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.

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.

An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.

Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear.

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.

When it's all over, it'll seem like a dream.

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.

Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.

My imagination is a kind of animal. So what I do is keep it alive.

She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.

Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone.

Sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

But intolerant,narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host,change form,and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.

A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.

I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.

No one could say how long that life would last. Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.

Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely.

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.

What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.

He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.

Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime.

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.

I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.

Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct.

This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.

But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me.

That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.

Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.