Murakami Quotes

Our faces were no more than ten inches apart but she was lightyears away from me.

Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb.

Life is like a box of cookies.

Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Like flowers scattered in a storm, a man's life is a long farewell.

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.

I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm just a guy who can write.

I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

With luck, it might even snow for us.

Everything in life is a metaphor.

What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

I move, therefore I am.

This place is too calm, too natural--too complete. I don't deserve it. At least not yet.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.

I closed my own jazz bar so I could be a man who can write novels as I like. I was pleased about that. This pleasure was connected to the pleasure of writing.

Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.

Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery.

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.

We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.

You don't have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.

Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend’s girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.

I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.

It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

You make do with what you have. As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have.

If only I could fall sound asleep and wake up in my old reality!

A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait.

I couldn't tell wether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of season

After all this, I won't start to hate you.

But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.

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.

It seemed to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.

The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death.

...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context.

My heroes don't have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.