Haruki Murakami Quotes

Animals that not only move by their own free will and share feelings with people but also possess sight and hearing qualify as deserving of names.

The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.

How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. "It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow." "Where do the lead?" "To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere." I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. "Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her.

People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restrictsyour thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. What I’ve up till now, what I’m going to do — they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just the stars — how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?

Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive system

Rousseau defined civilizations as when people build fences.

Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.

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

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.

I want to believe you, but if that's true, I just don't get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone?

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.

People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

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

And, well, mine are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don't want to do ANYTHING. Make sure you keep away from me then.' I'd like to, but how can I tell?' I asked. O.K., I'll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red one. That should work,' she said with a laugh. 'If you see me on the street and I'm wearing a red hat, don't talk to me, just run away.

I wonder what ants do on rainy days?

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words. - (Where I'm Likely To Find It)

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.

Be fearless, be brave, be bold, love yourself

Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love with you!

Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.

What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

Not that running away's going to solve everything. I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything.

Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.

If we reverse the outer shell and the essence--in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell--our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand.

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.

If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.

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

Our responsibility begins with our imagination.

Exerting yourself to the limit over and over again, that is the essence of running. Running is painful, but the pain doesn't leave me, I can take care of it. That agrees with my mentality.

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

The curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

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

And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city

Even if you don't acknowledge it, people die, and guys sleep with girls. That's just how it is.

Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.

There’s nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don’t fit the stereotype yet.

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

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.

Please remember: things are not what they seem.

My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.

As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.