In ancient times, people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much a thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.
Haruki MurakamiHow about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing." "Have you read it?" "No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.
Haruki MurakamiA certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made. It had always been there inside him. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it.
Haruki Murakamiice contains no future , just the past, sealed away. As if they're alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That's the essence of ice, the role it plays.
Haruki MurakamiI’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.
Haruki MurakamiWhat I saw wasn't a ghost. It was simply--myself. I can never forget how terrified I was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind: that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think?
Haruki MurakamiEverything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start- the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
Haruki MurakamiYou like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.
Haruki MurakamiEven if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
Haruki MurakamiWe were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.
Haruki Murakami...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.
Haruki MurakamiNo matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside.
Haruki MurakamiThis is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time.
Haruki MurakamiSome people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all.
Haruki MurakamiWhere I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.
Haruki MurakamiI can't imagine how American readers will react to a novel, but if the story is appealing it doesn't matter much if you don't catch all the detail. I'm not too familiar with the geography of nineteenth century London, for instance, but I still enjoy reading Dickens.
Haruki MurakamiWhat do I like about math? , When I've got figures in front of me, it relaxes me. Kind of like, everything fits where it belongs.
Haruki MurakamiI'm not human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.
Haruki MurakamiMyths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is.
Haruki MurakamiReading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I'd keep the book hidden so I could read during class. Before long I bought a small stereo and spent all my time in my room, listening to jazz records. But I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stack-up loner.
Haruki MurakamiStrong and independent? I’m neither. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not.
Haruki MurakamiHe does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.
Haruki MurakamiGrandfather always said school’s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.
Haruki MurakamiAs 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 MurakamiPotentiality knocks on the door of my heart. [On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning ]
Haruki MurakamiTo be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.
Haruki MurakamiSomething in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.
Haruki MurakamiNot to excuse myself, but when you have people right in front of you denying your very presence like that, then see if you don't doubt whether you actually exist. I look at my hands half expecting to see clear through them.
Haruki MurakamiDon't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul?
Haruki MurakamiYou know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one.
Haruki MurakamiThere weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.
Haruki MurakamiMy face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.
Haruki MurakamiI have no idea! I have been writing for 35 years and from the beginning up to now the situation's almost the same. I'm kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan.
Haruki MurakamiThe young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.
Haruki MurakamiOn any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.
Haruki Murakami