Haruki Murakami Quotes

I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.

Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

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.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.

As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.

I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.

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

Is it against the law for me to know it?

Huge organizations and me don't get along. They're too inflexible, waste too much time, and have too many stupid people.

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can't even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course.

I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.

When someone is trying very hard to get something, they don't. And when they're running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

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.

I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you realize.

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

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.

Sex is an extremely subtle undertaking, unlike going to the department store on a Sunday to buy a thermos.

At my core, there is nothing. Neither is it parched wastelands. At my core, there is love. I'll go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo forever --- his strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.

Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.

I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives - they're the ones you have to watch out for.

We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.

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