Love Haruki Murakami Quotes & Sayings

I've been all around. I've made a complete revolution. And I've come back to the fact that I need you. — Haruki Murakami

If you want to sleep with me, I don't mind. I've never slept with anybody, and I'm very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don't mind at all. But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you
take on all my troubles, and they're a lot worse than you can imagine. — Haruki Murakami

To me, love is a pure idea forged in flesh, awkwardly maybe, but it had to connect to somewhere, despite twists and turns of underground cable. An all-too-perfect thing. Sometimes the lines get crossed. Or you get a wrong number. But that's nobody's fault. It'll always be like that, so long as we exist in this physical form. As a matter of principle. — Haruki Murakami

I don't know, it's stupid being 20," she said. "I'm just not ready. It feels weird. Like somebody's pushing me from behind. — Haruki Murakami

I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."
"Waiting for perfect love?"
"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for. — Haruki Murakami

No matter where I find myself, this is the time of day I love best. The time that's mine alone. It'll be dawn soon, and I'm sitting here writing. Like Buddha, born from his mother's side (the right or the left, I can't recall), the new sun will lumber up and peek over the edge of the hills. — Haruki Murakami

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I' m not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living. — Haruki Murakami

Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love with him, but she never made demands.
'I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi,' Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him. — Haruki Murakami

How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away. — Haruki Murakami

You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without despair or loss, there is no hope. — Haruki Murakami

We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear. — Haruki Murakami

I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday. — Haruki Murakami

From his shoulder on down, the Rat felt the supple weight of her body. An odd sensation, that weight. This being that could love a man, bear children, grow old, and die; to think one whole existence was in this weight. — Haruki Murakami

If you're in love with someone, can't you manage one way or another with her? Hatsumi asked after a few moments' thought. — Haruki Murakami

Most of these university types are total phonies. They're scared to death somebody's gonna find they don't know something. They all read the same books and they all throw around the same words, and they get off listening to John Coltrane and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that 'revolution'? That does it for me, then. I'm not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I'm going to believe in. — Haruki Murakami

I find the act of writing very painful. I can go a whole month without managing a single line, or write three days and nights straight, only to find the whole thing has missed the mark.
At the same time, though, I love writing. Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it. — Haruki Murakami

You know what I like best about porn cinemas?"
"I couldn't begin to guess."
"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this "Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "I love that "Gulp!' It's so sweet! — Haruki Murakami

I think you still love me, but we can't escape the fact that I'm not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I'm not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I'm not angry, either. I should be, but I'm not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong. — Haruki Murakami

He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken. — Haruki Murakami

Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows - maybe even tomorrow. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one's own being. The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, and cut it's way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love. — Haruki Murakami

I love you," I said to her. "From the bottom of my heart. I don't ever want to let you go again. But there's nothing I can do. I can't make a move."
"Because of her?"
I nodded. — Haruki Murakami

Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of. — Haruki Murakami

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it's a kind of power that snares people and reels them in. — Haruki Murakami

If you don't believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind. — Haruki Murakami

Probably we'd have been better off born in nineteenth-century Russia. I'd have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such. We'd go hunting together, fight, be rivals in love, have our metaphysical complaints, drink beer watching the sunset from the shores of the Black Sea. In our later years, the two of us would be implicated in the Something-or-other Rebellion and exiled to Siberia, where we'd die. Brilliant, don't you think? — Haruki Murakami

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. — Haruki Murakami

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! — Haruki Murakami

It's kind of embarrassing to put this into words," she said, "but I want to stay friends with you, Junpei. Not just for now, but even after we get older. A lot older. I love Takatsuki, but I need you, too, in a different way. Does that make me selfish? — Haruki Murakami

For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again. — Haruki Murakami

But I'm not hte only one to blame,' Midori continued. 'It's ture I've got a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they - my father and mother - had loved me a little more. I would have been able to feel more - to feel real sadness for example.'
'Do you think you weren't loved enough?'
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. 'Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' 'I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. — Haruki Murakami

A 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 Murakami

And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn't see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You're a part of me; I'm a part of you. — Haruki Murakami

I'm going to take you out of here ... I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning. — Haruki Murakami

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone? — Haruki Murakami

Will you please get that look off your face? You're gonna make me cry. Don't worry, I know you're in love with somebody else. I'm not expecting anything from you. — Haruki Murakami

The proposition that we can look into another person's heart with perfect clarity strikes me as a fool's game. I don't care how well we think we should understand them, or how much we love them. All it can do is cause us pain. Examining your own heart, however, is another matter. I think it's possible to see what's in there if you work hard enough at it. So in the end maybe that's the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves. — Haruki Murakami

After a short breather, Reiko crushed her cigarette out and picked her guitar up again. She played "Penny Lane," "Blackbird," "Julia," "When I'm 64," "Nowhere Man," "And I Love Her," and "Hey Jude. — Haruki Murakami

Look out the window behind her. "I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches." "Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?" "That's right." "But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?" "I suppose so." "Have you ever thought about that?" "I have." A surprised look comes over her. "When?" "When I'm in love," I tell her. — Haruki Murakami

Everybody feels like that to some extent," I said. "They're trying to express themselves and it bothers them when they can't get it right. — Haruki Murakami

But this is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings. but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it. All by yourself. — Haruki Murakami

The breeze carried snatches of music from a large portable radio on the grass: a sugary song of love either lost or about to be. — Haruki Murakami

A more pressing problem for me is that I have never been able to love anyone seriously. I have never felt unconditional love for anyone since the day I was born, never felt that I could give myself completely to that one person. Never once. — Haruki Murakami

After she had gone through most of the songs she knew, she sang an old one that she said she had written herself. I'd love to cook a stew for you But I have no pot. I'd love to knit a scarf for you But I have no wool. I'd love to write a poem for you But I have no pen. "It's called 'I Have Nothing,'" Midori announced. It was a truly terrible song, both words and music. I listened to this musical mess with thoughts of how the house would blow apart in the explosion if the gas station caught fire. Tired of singing, Midori put her guitar down and slumped against my shoulder like a cat in the sun. "How did you like my song?" she asked. I answered cautiously, "It was unique and original and very expressive of your personality." "Thanks," she said. "The theme is that I have nothing." "Yeah, I kinda thought so. — Haruki Murakami

People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile. — Haruki Murakami

I miss her every now and then, but finally, she didn't move me. I don't know, sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. — Haruki Murakami

Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing breath. Only Sumire could do that for me. — Haruki Murakami

I love pop culture
the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that.
That's why I said I don't like elitism. — Haruki Murakami

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing. — Haruki Murakami

It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody. — Haruki Murakami

My husband and I see each other only on weekends, and generally get along well. We're like good friends, life partners able to spend some pleasant time together. We talk about all sorts of things, and we trust each other implicitly. Where and how he has a sex life I don't know,and I don't really care. We never make love, though
never even touch each other. I feel bad about it, but I don't want to touch him. I just don't want to. — Haruki Murakami

Be fearless, be brave, be bold, love yourself — Haruki Murakami

Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways - innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film - like a stick with eyes. I'd love to show you a photo of her but I don't have any. She hated having her photograph taken - no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. — Haruki Murakami

Even now, whenever I think of her, I envision a quiet Sunday morning. A gentle, clear day, just getting under way. No homework to do, just a Sunday when you could do what you wanted. She always gave me this kick-back-and-relax, Sunday-morning kind of feeling. — Haruki Murakami

Love songs sweet enough to rot your teeth. — Haruki Murakami

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?"
"Kind of like a hobby?" she said, amused.
"Yeah I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that's OK too. — Haruki Murakami

I was not too crazy about sleeping with girls I didn't know. It was an easy way to take care of my sex drive of course, and I did enjoy all the holding and touching, but I hated the morning after. I'd wake up and find this strange girl sleeping next to me, and the room would reek of alcohol, and the bed and the lighting and the curtains had that special "love hotel" garishness, and my head would be in a hungover fog. — Haruki Murakami

Reiko set the ball on the ground and patted my knee. "Look," she said, "I'm not telling you to stop sleeping with girls. If you're O.K. with that, then it's OK. It's your life after all, it's something you have to decide. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't use yourself up in some unnatural form. Do you see what I'm getting at? It would be such a waste. The years nineteen and twenty are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older. It's true. So think carefully. If you want to take care of Naoko, take care of yourself too."
I said I would think about it. — Haruki Murakami

I was feeling lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation. Loneliness wasn't such a bad feeling. It was like the stillness of the pin oak after the little birds had flown off. — Haruki Murakami

All he wanted from the girl was for her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace where the two of them could be alone. And he wanted her to tell him something - anything - about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that "something" might be. — Haruki Murakami

I love no one and am loved by no one. — Haruki Murakami

People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love. — Haruki Murakami

I love books that create worlds for me that I don't want to leave. I recently lost my entire life to Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. I tell people that book ruined my life in the best possible way. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I read it. — Sarah Kay

Nights without work I spent with whisky and books. — Haruki Murakami

The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. — Haruki Murakami

If I'm going to merely ramble, maybe I should just snuggle under the warm covers, think of Miu, and play with myself. — Haruki Murakami

This lady has deep feelings for Tengo, Ushikawa thought admiringly. Almost a kind of unconditional love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone else? — Haruki Murakami

Yup, you're in a strange position, all right. You're in love with a girl who is no more, jealous of a boy who's gone forever. Even so, this emotion you're feeling is more real, and more intensely painful, than anything you've ever felt before. And there's no way out. No possibility of finding an exit. You've wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out. Am I right? — Haruki Murakami

You know how to put pretty words on a page, but you don't know shit about a woman's feelings. — Haruki Murakami

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? Why the hell does it have to be like that? — Haruki Murakami

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it
to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. — Haruki Murakami

Energies expended on sideshows, never on the main event. Where the hell was the main event? Was there a main event? — Haruki Murakami

Never really loved by anyone, never seeming really to love anyone either — Haruki Murakami

Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman. He did not welcome the unavoidable responsibility that came with dating a woman his own age, falling in love, and having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through which one had to pass, the hints regarding various possibilities, the unavoidable collisions of expectations: Tengo hoped to get by without taking on such burdens.
The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure most forms of deprivation. — Haruki Murakami

If you miss the bus, miss the train, you'd be left behind. So everyone says, let's get on the train, let's get on the bus and go faster and get rich ... I just didn't like that kind of lifestyle. I love to read books, to listen to music. — Haruki Murakami

I love you, I really do. — Haruki Murakami

Making love was a joining, a connection between one person and another. You receive something, and you also have to give — Haruki Murakami

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity. — Haruki Murakami

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever. — Haruki Murakami

Number one of the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell. — Haruki Murakami

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, 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. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone. — Haruki Murakami

I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted. I'd date one for a few months, and then start thinking: This isn't what I want. — Haruki Murakami

Ok I'm not so smart I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running and it's the working class that get exploited. What kind revolution is it that just throws out big words that working class people can't understand.
Revolution or not the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes
I'm not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I'm going to believe in.
Midori — Haruki Murakami

And our ages never bothered her from the very beginning. I was married, but that didn't matter, either. She seemed to consider things like age and family and income to be of the same a priori order as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one's fingernails. The sort of thing that thinking about won't change one bit. And that much said, well, she had a point. — Haruki Murakami

I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. — Haruki Murakami

I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning. — Haruki Murakami

Aren't you afraid, though?" Ayumi asked Aomame.
"Afraid of what?"
"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?
Aomame stared at the red wine in her glass. "Maybe I do," she said. "But at least I have someone I love. — Haruki Murakami

So after he died, I didn't know how to relate to other people. I didn't know what it means to love another person. — Haruki Murakami

Do you think music has the power to change people? Like you listen to a piece and go through some major change inside?"
Oshima nodded."Sure, that can happen. We have an experience - like a chemical reaction - that transforms something inside us. When we examine ourselves later on, we discover that all the standards we've lived by have shot up another notch and the world's opened up in unexpected ways. Yes, I've had that experience. Not often, but it has happened. It's like falling in love. — Haruki Murakami

He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone. — Haruki Murakami

I'm safe inside this container called me. — Haruki Murakami

Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love. — Haruki Murakami

Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps. — Haruki Murakami

What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being. — Haruki Murakami

You mean machines are like humans?"
I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further.
With humans it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated. — Haruki Murakami

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! — Haruki Murakami

Somewhere, far, far away, there's a shitty island. An island without a name. An island not worth giving a name. A shitty island with a shitty shape. On this shitty island grow palm trees that also have shitty shapes. And the palm trees produce coconuts that give off a shitty smell. Shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they love to eat these shitty-smelling coconuts, after which they shit the world's foulest shit. The shit falls on the ground and builds up shitty mounds, making the shitty palm trees that grown on them even shittier. It's an endless cycle. — Haruki Murakami

My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning. — Haruki Murakami

Is that what you see in my eyes, that you know nothing about me?"
"Nothing is written in your eyes". I replied.
"It is written in my eyes and i see the reflection in yours — Haruki Murakami

Loving her, and being loved, was the only way I could hold myself together. — Haruki Murakami