Haruki Murakami Quotes

In truly deep darkness, all kinds of strange things were possible.

Necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy.

There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose--a gleaming, round saucer--over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul--or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness. THAT moon.

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.

I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials.

Slowly like a movie fade out, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him.

Nestled next to me, she nodded. “I’m fine. As long as I take the medicine. So don’t worry.” She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “But don’t ask me anything, okay? Why that happened.”“Understood. No questions,” I said.“Thank you very much for today,” she said.“What part of today?”“For taking me to the river. For giving me water from your mouth. For putting up with me.”I looked at her. Her lips were right in front of me. The lips I had kissed as I gave her water. And once more those lips seemed to be seeking me. Slightly parted, with her beautiful white teeth barely visible. I could still feel her soft tongue, which I’d touched slightly as I gave her water. I found it hard to breathe, and I couldn’t think. My body burned. She wants me, I thought. And I want her.

Don't blame me. That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution.

I mean, the ones on trial are not like me in any way: they're a different kind of human being. They live in a different world, they think different thoughts, and their actions are nothing like mine. Between the world they live in and the world I live in there's this thick, high wall. At least, that's how I saw it at first. ...I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mache. The second I leaned on it, I'd probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it's that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven't noticed.

I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world.

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.

Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.

I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?

the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed--your self. You must believe in your own powers.

You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can’t erase the history that produced them

Once you pass a certain age, life becomes noting more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacement never goes well. It’s all very painful- as painful as actually being cut with a knife.

All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.

A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.

In response to my father-in-law's view, I offered no opinion. He was not looking for my opinion. He had merely been spouting his belief, a conviction that would remain unchanged for all eternity.

In ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or 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 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.

Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.

Every person has their own colour.

Writing things was important, wasn't it? Nakata asked.'Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.

No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.

There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.

It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.

I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.

There was much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed.

I think most readers would say the same. Most would choose Midori. And the protagonist, of course, chooses her in the end. But some part of him is always in the other world and he cannot abandon it. It’s a part of him, an essential part. All human beings have a sickness in their minds. That space is a part of them.

...somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected.

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

It might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly : I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two everyday running alone, not speaking to anyone as well as four of five hours at my desk, to be neither difficult or boring.

People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither if us know anything substantial about the other.

You know what I should do?" Hoshino asked excited. "Of course," the cat said. "What'd I tell you? Cats know everything. Not like dogs.

There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself.

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are like guideposts to my heart...

(When asked “Was the model for Midori (a character in Norwegian Wood) modeled after your wife?”)I showed your message to my wife. She got mad and yelled: “What would make them think I was the model for Midori?!” She told me to fix the misunderstanding immediately, so that’s why I’m writing this reply now. Please stop causing problems in my household. Thank you.

A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how to die.

Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn't have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women's wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits.My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.

Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!

Even if things were the same, people's perception of them might have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter.

As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn't know how to express them, but rather it didn't know what to express.

April and May were painful, lonely months for me because I couldn't talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like this.

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition.

Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody.

Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where - at a special time and place - imagination had been set free.

So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

I could never tell what was going on inside the pretty heads of the girls that Naoko brought along, and they probably couldn't understand me, either.

Not being able to find the right words at crucial times is one of my many problems.

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.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I miss you something awful sometimes

No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said. So hold me. Now. Right here.

Maybe so, but I'm not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I'm working hard. I'm working ten times harder than you are.

Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence ar

You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this." "I believe you," she whispers after a moment. "Please find my mind.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.