Haruki Murakami Quotes

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

It's not me but the world that's deranged.

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.

A person’s destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance.

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.

Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.

I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky

sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.

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.

Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.

I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.

Killing time is not an easy job.

What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.

There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else.

In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.

Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us.

The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?

Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution because it follows 67?

When I wake up, my pillow’s cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea.

Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

You can have tons of talent, but it won't necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, through, you'll never go hungry.

Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.

The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment she put them into words.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

At times like this, adults need a drink

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.

How much do you love me?' Midori asked. 'Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,' I said.

The light of morning decomposes everything.

What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.

Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.

As long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside.

Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on.

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

Friends don't need the intervention of a third party. Friendship's a voluntary thing.

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.

Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.

If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well.

If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.

..finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.

Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.