Haruki Murakami Quotes & Sayings

And so, on the surface at least, I had become an ordinary girl again. — Haruki Murakami

As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. That's one of the few good points of growing older — Haruki Murakami

I was beginning to understand what Hiraku Makimura meant about Ame's wearing him down. Ame didn't give anything. She only took. She consumed those around her to sustain herself. And those around her always gave. Her talent was manifested in a powerful gravitational pull. She believed it was her privilege, her right. Harmony and peace. In order for her to have that, she had everyone waiting on her hand and foot. — Haruki Murakami

Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out. — Haruki Murakami

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought. — Haruki Murakami

In ancient times people weren't simply 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 everyone 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." "Why did God do that?" "Divide people into two? You've got me. God works in mysterious ways. There's that whole wrath-of-God thing, all that excessive idealism and so on. My guess is it was punishment for something. As in the Bible. Adam and Eve and the Fall and so on." "Original sin," I say. — Haruki Murakami

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes. — Haruki Murakami

Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive. — Haruki Murakami

Happiness is a warm friendship. — Haruki Murakami

After all, what does the stock market sell us if not the unfounded hope of a rosy future? — Haruki Murakami

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something. — Haruki Murakami

There's a kind of gap between what I think is real and what's really real , I get this feeling like some kind of little something other is there somewhere inside me ... ..like a burglar is in the house hiding in a closet ... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established the way a magnet can make a machine go crazy — Haruki Murakami

When you get used to that kind of life - of never having anything you want - then you stop knowing what it is you want. — Haruki Murakami

Everyone lets their hair down here. — Haruki Murakami

A smile like a small wisp of smoke drifting quietly skyward on a windless day. — Haruki Murakami

The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person can't control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn't enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal you make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that's it. — Haruki Murakami

More than once I tried stretching my hand out in the dark. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond my grasp. — Haruki Murakami

He put the sliced celery and mushrooms into the frying pan. Turning the gas flame up to high and lightly jogging the pan, he carefully stirred the contents with a bamboo spatula, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper. When the vegetables were just beginning to cook, he tossed the drained shrimp into the pan. After adding another dose of salt and pepper to the whole thing, he poured in a small glass of sake. Then a dash of soy sauce and finally a scattering of Chinese parsley. — Haruki Murakami

The feel of her hand has never left me. It was different from any other hand I'd ever held, different from any touch I've ever known. It was merely the small, warm hand of a twelve-year-old girl, yet those five fingers and that palm were like a display case crammed full of everything I wanted to know
and everything I had to know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I became a tiny bird, fluttering into the air, the wind rushing by. From high in the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that place. — Haruki Murakami

I think of rivers, of tides. Forests and water gushing out. Rain and lightning. Rocks and shadows. All of these are in me. — Haruki Murakami

A question.
So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow - not thinking, in other words? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.
In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly any collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites.
Reality, reality. — Haruki Murakami

Revolution or not, the working class will keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure as hell isn't just changing the name on city hall. — Haruki Murakami

Nakata had passed away calmly in his sleep, most likely not thinking of anything. His face was peaceful, with no signs of suffering, regret, or confusion. Very Nakata-like, Hoshino concluded. But what his life really meant, Hoshino had no idea. Not that anybody's life had more clear-cut meaning to it. What's really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Still, how you live determines how you die. These thoughts ran through his head as he stared at the face of the dead old man. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow. — Haruki Murakami

The Ainu youth came upon a band of Ainu hunters passing through the area. "What is this area called?" he asked them.
"Do you really think this asshole of a terrain even deserves a name?" they replied. — Haruki Murakami

So then, we're never going to cry, that's just how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would never do anything like that. The bastards! The more they wanted to see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the satisfaction. — Haruki Murakami

She would go to bed at ten, read a few pages in her book, and fall asleep. Aomame had never had trouble falling asleep. As she read, she would get sleepy. — Haruki Murakami

I'm not the smartest girl in the world. If anything, I'm sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn't care less about 'systems' and 'responsibility'. All I want is to get married and have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies. That's plenty for me. It's all I want out of life. — Haruki Murakami

The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it. — Haruki Murakami

But this thing, whatever it was, this mistlike something, hung there inside my body like a certain kind of potential. I wanted to give it a name, but the word refused to come to mind. I'm terrible at finding the right words for things. I'm sure Tolstoy would have been able to come up with exactly the right word — Haruki Murakami

I skipped the thirty-one years between 1938 and 1965 and jumped to the section entitled "Junitaki Today." Of course, the book's "today" being 1970, it was hardly today's "today." Still, writing the history of one town obviously imposed the necessity of bringing it up to a "today." And even if such a today soon ceases to be today, no one can deny that it is in fact a today. For if a today ceased to be today, history could not exist as history. — Haruki Murakami

Well, think of what I'm doing to you right now. For me I'm the self, and you're the object. For you, of course, it's the exact opposite - you're the self to you and I'm the object. And by exchanging self and object, we can project ourselves onto the other and gain self-consciousness. Volitionally." "I still don't get it, but it sure feels good." "That's the whole idea," the girl said. — Haruki Murakami

Kind of," I said, "still, think about this. Everyone's built the same. It's like we're all riding together on a broken airplane. Of course there are lucky people, there are also unlucky people. There're tough people, and weak people, rich people, and poor people. However, not a single person's broken the mold with his toughness. We're all the same. Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll want to get stronger. Even if you're just pretending. Don't you think? — Haruki Murakami

Like, if I suggested to a school friend we do something, she could say, 'Sorry, I don't have any money'. Which is something I could never say if the situation was reversed. If I said "I don't have any money', it would really mean "I don't have any money'. It's sad. Like, if a pretty girl says "I look
terrible today, I don't want to go out,' that's OK, but if an ugly girl says the same thing people laugh at her. That's what the world was like for
me. — Haruki Murakami

In this immaculate, orderly room, in the presence of this immaculate, handsome youth, my tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. No, they were dirty and worn out, the heels practically gone, the color an indeterminate gray, the uppers full of holes. These shoes had been through a lot, soaking up everything in their path
with fatal certainty. — Haruki Murakami

I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge. — Haruki Murakami

I don't get bored. — Haruki Murakami

The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart. — Haruki Murakami

I was reduced to pure concept. My flesh had dissolved; my form had dissipated. I floated in space. Liberated of my corporeal being, but without dispensation to go anywhere else.I was adrift in the void. Somewhere across the fine line separating nightmare from reality. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I feel so- I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going'
Like a little lost Sputnik?'
I guess so. — Haruki Murakami

Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. It's makin' a straight line for the brain. No dodgin' it not for anyone. People have't die, the body has't fall. Time is hurlin' that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin' thought goes on subdividin' that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits.
In other words, immortality. — Haruki Murakami

For a ten-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl to become good friends was not easy under any circumstances. Indeed, it might be one of the most difficult accomplishments in the world. — Haruki Murakami

Thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again. — Haruki Murakami

Still, sometimes they leave behind a small memento, like Haida and the boxed set of Years of Pilgrimage. He probably didn't simply forget it, but intentionally left it behind in Tsukuru's apartment. And Tsukuru loved that music, for it connected him to Haida, and to Shiro. It was the vein that connected these three scattered people. A fragile, thin vein, but one that still had living, red blood coursing through it. The power of music made it possible. Whenever he listened to that music, particularly "Le mal du pays," vivid memories of the two of them swept over him. At times it even felt like they were right beside him, quietly breathing. — Haruki Murakami

Everything 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 Murakami

Deep rivers run quiet. — Haruki Murakami

Of course, they're not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool. — Haruki Murakami

People have to get out sometimes - have something good to eat, have some drinks, belt out some songs, talk about nothing in particular. — Haruki Murakami

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in. — Haruki Murakami

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I'm working class. Revolution or not, the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure as
hell isn't just changing the name on city hall. But those guys don't know that - those guys with their big words. Tell me, Watanabe, have you ever seen a taxman? — Haruki Murakami

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 Murakami

Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on. — Haruki Murakami

His heart was racing and he took slow, deep breaths. And as he inhaled, he suddenly noticed a cold,hard object near the center of his body - like a hard core of earth that remains frozen all year long. This was the source of the pain in his chest, and the difficulty breathing. He had never known, until this moment , that such a thing existed inside him. Yet it was this pain, and this sense of being choked, that he needed. It was exactly what he had to acknowledge, what he had to confront. From now on, he had to make that cold core melt, bit by bit. It might take time, but it was what he had to do. But his own body heat wasn't enough to melt that frozen soil. He needed someone else's warmth. — Haruki Murakami

Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble. — Haruki Murakami

All without any more sound than flipping over a playing card. And sitting in this limo, compared to my fifteen-year-old Volkswagen Beetle I'd bought off a friend, was as quiet as sitting at the bottom of a lake wearing earplugs. — Haruki Murakami

Never being constrained, thinking about things freely - that's what you're hoping for?" "Exactly." "But it seems to me that thinking about things freely can't be easy." "It means leaving behind your physical body. Leaving the cage of your physical flesh, breaking free of the chains, and letting pure logic soar free. Giving a natural life to logic. That's the core of free thought." "It doesn't sound easy." Haida shook his head. "No, depending on how you look at it, it's not that hard. Most people do it at times, without even realizing it. That's how they manage to stay sane. They're just not aware that's what they're doing. — Haruki Murakami

Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking about one unrelated thing after another. I don't know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want to let my thoughts wander freely. In that sense, I guess, I'm probably still on the road to recovery. — Haruki Murakami

What kind of world will be there tomorrow? "No one knows the answer to that," Fuka-Eri said. — Haruki Murakami

The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met."
"You've met God?"
"Certainly. I telephone Him every night. — Haruki Murakami

In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. — Haruki Murakami

When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not. — Haruki Murakami

Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale ... than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could fully comprehend. — Haruki Murakami

I wanted to begin a new life where I didn't know a soul. — Haruki Murakami

If you think of someone enough, you're sure to meet them again. — Haruki Murakami

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines. — Haruki Murakami

I feel it can be dangerous to explain whole cultures with buzzwords. — Haruki Murakami

Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it. — Haruki Murakami

Where are you now?'
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place. — Haruki Murakami

Life: I'll never understand it. — Haruki Murakami

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply 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 arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone 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 half. — Haruki Murakami

There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. — Haruki Murakami

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night. — Haruki Murakami

What makes us most normal is knowing that we're not normal. — Haruki Murakami

So you finally made Naoko yours,' I heard myself telling him. 'Oh well, she was yours to begin with. — Haruki Murakami

Ideas are like beards. Men don't have them until they grow up. Somebody said that, but I can't remember who."
"Voltaire," the younger man said. He rubbed his chin and smiled, a cheerful,
unaffected smile. "Voltaire might be off the mark, though, when it comes to me. I have hardly any beard at all, but have loved thinking about things since I was a kid."
His face was indeed smooth, with no hint of a beard. His eyebrows were narrow, but thick, his ears nicely formed, like lovely seashells. "I wonder if what Voltaire meant wasn't ideas as much as meditation," Tsukuru said. The man inclined his head a fraction. "Pain is what gives rise to meditation. It has
nothing to do with age, let alone beards. — Haruki Murakami

Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade. — Haruki Murakami

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. — Haruki Murakami

There's an upside to passengers too. A guy around 50, always travels on the first train of the day, always used to greet me, he probably thought I'd died until I returned to the job. Yesterday morning when we met, he said: "Alive and well means you've still got things to do. Don't give up the fight!" It's such an encouragement just to get a cheerful greeting. Nothing comes of hatred. — Haruki Murakami

I, too, remember that feeling. You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost. — Haruki Murakami

But think about it -what if there were a deus ex machina in real life? Everything would be so easy! If you felt stuck or trapped, some god would swing down from up there and solve all your problems. What could be easier than that? — Haruki Murakami

He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him. — Haruki Murakami

All sorts of people told me their stories. Then they left, never to return, as if I were no more than a bridge they were clattering across. — Haruki Murakami

I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. — Haruki Murakami

Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody. — Haruki Murakami

Responsibility for it lies in the intolerance that can take over a person's mind. — Haruki Murakami

Each individual has their own unique color, which shines faintly around the contours of their body. Like a halo. Or a backlight. I'm able to see those colors clearly. — Haruki Murakami

Don't you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there's a huge possibility you'll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn't that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don't you find that scary? — Haruki Murakami

I'm not saying that kinda life's bad. But I wonder, y'know, if life should really be that easy, that comfortable. It might be better to go our separate ways for a while, and if we find out that we really can't get along without each other, then we get back together. — Haruki Murakami

He wished he could be with her longer, spend more time with her, have a good, leisurely talk. But she had her own life, most of which occurred offstage, in a place he didn't yet know about, doing things that had nothing to do with him. — Haruki Murakami

I just wanted to go home. Take a quick bath, have a beer, and sink into my warm bed with my cigarettes and Kant. — Haruki Murakami

You have to experience it to understand. One thing I can say, though, is that once you see that true sight with your own eyes, the world you've lived in up till now will look flat and insipid. There's no logic or illogic in that scene. No good or evil. Everything is merged into one. And you are part of that merging. You leave the boundary of your physical body behind to become a metaphysical being. You become intuition. — Haruki Murakami

But knowing what I don't want to do doesn't help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don't have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That's my problem now. I can't find the image. — Haruki Murakami

Her eyes were narrow, but when she really looked at something they suddenly opened wide: two dark eyes, never timid, brimming with curiosity. He — Haruki Murakami

I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much. — Haruki Murakami

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me. — Haruki Murakami

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. — Haruki Murakami

There are things in this world you can't do a damn thing about." "Like what?" "Like a rotten tooth, for example. One day it just starts aching. No one can ease the pain, no matter how hard they try to comfort you. It makes you furious with yourself. Next thing you know you're furious with them because they aren't pissed off with themselves. See how it escalates? — Haruki Murakami

Surfing's a more profound kind of sport than it looks. When you surf, you learn not to fight the power of nature, even if it gets violent. — Haruki Murakami

You couldn't begin to imagine who I am, where I'm going, or what I'm about to do, All of you are trapped here. You can't go anywhere, forward or back. But I'm not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead. — Haruki Murakami

Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you. — Haruki Murakami