Murakami Death Quotes & Sayings

If anything, my physical death would be, for me, a form of salvation, It would liberate me for ever from this hopeless prison, this pain of being me. — Haruki Murakami

Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is about to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.
That night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the 17-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well. — Haruki Murakami

You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."
Nimit in "Thailand — Haruki Murakami

Death, of course, lasts forever. — Haruki Murakami

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. — Haruki Murakami

Dying is the only way/ For you to float free: / Nomonhan — Haruki Murakami

Those are life-and-death-type experiences he goes through in the mines. Eventually he gets out and goes back to his old life. But nothing in the novel shows he learned anything from these experiences, that his life changed, that he thought deeply now about the meaning of life or started questioning society or anything. You don't get any sense, either, that he's matured. You have a strange feeling after you finish the book. It's like you wonder what Soseki was trying to say. It's like not really knowing what he's getting at is the part that stays with you. — Haruki Murakami

If people lived forever - if they never got any older - if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy - do you think they'd bother to think hard about things, the way were doing now? I mean, we think about its everything, more or less - philosophy, psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such t
hing as death, the complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world. — Haruki Murakami

It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density. — Haruki Murakami

Are you prepared to die?"
"I am half dead already," Nimit said as if stating the obvious. — 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

From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value. — Haruki Murakami

A few beasts have frozen to death in their posture of sleep. Yet they appear not dead so much as deep in meditation. No breath issues from them. Their bodies unmoving, their awareness swallowed in darkness. After all the other beasts have gone through the Gate, these dead remain like growths on the face of the earth. Their horns angle up into space, almost alive. I — Haruki Murakami

I don't think you will ever be able to understand what it is like - the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation - to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome by intense pain in total darkness. I went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and got it over with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died here, however, it would be truly a lonely death, a death of no concern to anyone, a silent death. — Haruki Murakami

Death was as silent as the ocean bottom, as sweet as a rose in May. — Haruki Murakami

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. — Haruki Murakami

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death. — Haruki Murakami

That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. — Haruki Murakami

If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world
close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies. — Haruki Murakami

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything's going to be all right. you've made it past Dead Man's Curve and you're out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not. — 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

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death. — Haruki Murakami

Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die. — Haruki Murakami

He calmed himself, shut his eyes, and fell asleep. The rear light of consciousness, like the last express train of the night, began to fade into the distance, gradually speeding up, growing smaller until it was, finally, sucked into the depths of night, where it disappeared. All that remained was the sound of the wind slipping through a stand of white birch trees. — Haruki Murakami

It's really difficult to talk about dead people, but it's even harder to talk about dead young women. It's because from the time they die, they'll be young forever. On the other hand, for us, the survivors, every year, every month, every day, we get older.
Sometimes, I feel like I can feel myself aging from one hour to the next. It's a terrible thing, but that's reality. — Haruki Murakami

Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used. — Haruki Murakami

If there had been a door within reach that led straight to death, he wouldn't have hesitated to push it open, without a second thought. — Haruki Murakami

Aren't you afraid of dying?
Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it. — Haruki Murakami

There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones. — Haruki Murakami

The spring on a wound watch gets steadily looser, the torque grows closer and closer to zero, until he gears stop altogether and the hands come to rest at a set position. Silence descends. Isn't that all it is? — Haruki Murakami

I'm not afraid to die. What I'm afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind. — Haruki Murakami

No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. — Haruki Murakami

The room was utterly silent. Now there is the silence you encounter on entering a grand manor. And there is the silence that comes of too few people in too big a space. But this was a different quality of silence altogether. A ponderous, oppressive silence. A silence reminiscent, though it took me a while to put my finger on it, of the silence that hangs around a terminal patient. A silence pregnant with the presentiment of death. The air faintly musty and ominous. — Haruki Murakami

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. — Haruki Murakami

The blood cyst works kind of like a whip, doesn't it?" I asked. "For the sheep to manipulate the host." "Exactly. Once that forms, there's no escaping the sheep." "So what on earth was the Boss after, doing what he was doing?" "He went mad. He probably couldn't take the heat of that blast furnace. The sheep used him to build up a supreme power base. That's why the sheep entered him. He was, in a word, disposable. The man was zero as a thinker, after all." "So when the Boss died, you were earmarked to take over that power base." "I'm afraid so." "And what lay ahead after that?" "A realm of total conceptual anarchy. A scheme in which all opposites would be resolved into unity. With me and the sheep at the center." "So why did you reject it?" Time trailed off into death. And over this dead time, a silent snow was falling. "I guess I felt attached to my — Haruki Murakami

Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, Tsukuru had fallen into the bowels of death, one untold day after another, lost in a dark, stagnant void. — Haruki Murakami

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die. — Haruki Murakami

All those different names, dates, deaths, each backed with a past life, were like shrubs in an arboretum, spaced out equidistantly as far as the eye could
see. No gently swaying breezes for them, no fragrances, no touch of a hand reaching through the darkness. They who seemed like trees lost to time. They to whom no thoughts occurred, nor would ever have words to get them across. They'd left all that to those who still had some living to do. — Haruki Murakami

Most of these student types are total frauds. They're scared to death somebody's gonna find out they don't know something. They all read the same books and they all spout the same slogans, and they love listening to John Coltrane and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that a revolution? ... Well if that's a revolution, you can stick it. — 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

I bet the reason people are afraid of going bald is because it makes them think of the end of life. I mean, when your hair starts to thin, it must feel as if your life is being worn away ... as if you've taken a giant step in the direction of death, the last Big Consumption. — Haruki Murakami

He once told me about polar bears - what solitary animals they are. They mate just once a year. One time in a whole year. There is no such thing as a lasting male-female bond in their world. One male polar bear and one female polar bear meet by sheer chance somewhere in the frozen vastness, and they mate. It doesn't take long. And once they are finished, the male runs away from the female as if he is frightened to death: he runs from the place where they have mated. He never looks back - literally. The rest of the year he lives in deep solitude. Mutual communications - the touching of two hearts - do not exist for them. So, that is the story of polar bears - or at least it is what my employer told me about them.'
How very strange.'
Yes, it is strange. I remember asking my employer, ' Then what do polar bears exist for?' ' Yes, exactly,' he said with a big smile. 'Then what do we exist for? — Haruki Murakami

They take the circuits out of people's brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I'm sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don't have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do. — Haruki Murakami

She and I were bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that for us from the start — Haruki Murakami

Her words didn't have the acrid smell of death. — Haruki Murakami

Don't worry, it's only death. Don't let it bother you. — Haruki Murakami

But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar. — Ryu Murakami

The pistol against her back was as hard and cold as death, and the feeling soothed her. — 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

You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body. — Ryu Murakami

It's unfair."
As a rule, life is unfair," I said.
Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."
To Dick?"
Yeah."
I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry. — Haruki Murakami

As we live, we breathe death into our lungs, like fine particles of dust. — Haruki Murakami

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness — Haruki Murakami

A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds. — Haruki Murakami

IT's not death. It's eternal life. And you get't'be yourself. Compared to that, this world isn't but a momentary fantasy. Please don't forget that. — Haruki Murakami

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

She tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. 'Words turn into stone,' Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner's 'I'll Remember April.' Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come. — Haruki Murakami

People face death while they're still alive, — Haruki Murakami

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. — Haruki Murakami

Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart. — Haruki Murakami

Life has gotten too much. I have no problem with dying as I am. I don't have the energy to go out and find a method to help me take my life. But quietly accepting death, that I can handle. — Haruki Murakami

As I was sipping the hot liquid, I realized that I had developed a kind of liking for this little man on the verge of death. — Haruki Murakami

Who hasn't wanted to die at one time or another? — Ryu Murakami

True, he was tremendously boring, which really got on her nerves, but that was not a crime deserving of death. Probably. — Haruki Murakami

I find myself thinking about my ongoing existence as a human being and the path that lies ahead of me. Though of course these thoughts lead to but one place - death. — Haruki Murakami

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved. — Haruki Murakami

Perhaps he didn't commit suicide then because he couldn't conceive of a method that fit the pure and intense feelings he had toward death. But method was beside the point. If there had been a door within reach that led straight to death, he wouldn't have hesitated to push it open, without a second thought, as if it were just a part of ordinary life. For better or for worse, though, there was no such door nearby. — Haruki Murakami

I've never once thought about how I was going to die," she said. "I can't think about it. I don't even know how I'm going to live. — Haruki Murakami

By living our lives, we nurture death. — Haruki Murakami

Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there. — Haruki Murakami

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. — Haruki Murakami

There in that pool stained with green blood, he had learned two things: one was that all the pain stopped when you stopped fighting death; and the other was that as long as you could still hear your heart beating, you had to keep fighting back. — Ryu Murakami

The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn't stand it. — Haruki Murakami

Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I'm sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don't have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do. You never have to starve. — Haruki Murakami

To tell the truth, I don't really understand the causes behind my runner's blues. Or why now it's beginning to fade. It's too early to explain it well. Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about it is this: That's life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what's going on. Like taxes, the tide rising and falling, John Lennon's death, and miscalls by referees at the World Cup. — 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 suppose if there is to be some judgement after death, a god will be the one to judge me, but it doesn't frighten me in the least. I did nothing wrong. I reserve the right to declare the justice of my case in anyone's presence. — Haruki Murakami