Ryu Quotes & Sayings

It was the face of a human being who'd been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever. — Ryu Murakami

Oba-sans, to put it in somewhat difficult terms, are life-forms that have stopped evolving. And anyone can turn into an Oba-san. Young women, of course, but even young men, even middle-aged men - even children. You turn into an Oba-san the instant you lose the will to evolve. — Ryu Murakami

But for all we've lost, hope is in fact one thing we Japanese have regained. The great earthquake and tsunami have robbed us of many lives and resources. But we who were so intoxicated with our own prosperity have once again planted the seed of hope. So I choose to believe. — Ryu Murakami

No forgiveness for lies. — Ryu Murakami

I don't need to eat the stuff now because now I'm here-right in the middle of it!The soup I ordered in Colorado had all these little slices of vegetables and things, which at the time just looked like kitchen scrapings to me. But now I'm in the miso soup myself,just like those bits of vegetable. I'm floating around in this giant bowl of it, and that's good enough for me. — Ryu Murakami

The inside of the forest differed a lot than the outside. From the outside, it looked like the trees were spread apart enough to get some light in, but when I went inside, it was completely dark and the branches blocked out almost all sunlight. This — Jason Ryu

When you're a kid, getting lost isn't just an event or a situation, it's like a career move. You get this thrill of anxiety and fear and a feeling that you've done something that can never be undone. — Ryu Murakami

I put the thin fragment of glass, dripping blood, in my pocket, and ran out into the misty road. The doors and windows of the houses were shut, nothing was moving. I thought I'd been swallowed by a huge living thing, that I was turning around and around in its stomach like the hero of some fairy tale. — Ryu Murakami

But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that. — Ryu Murakami

And sometimes ignorance is even harder to deal with than deliberate evil. — Ryu Murakami

It's always precisely the sort of smug old wanker you would never ever want to end up like. We don't live the way you tell us to because we're afraid that if we do we'll grow up to be like you, and the thought of that is unbearable. It's alright for you because you'll be dead soon anyway, but we've still got another fifty or sixty years to live in this stinking country. — Ryu Murakami

It was a face that instantly robbed those who gazed upon it of a good thirty percent
of the energy they needed to go on living. — Ryu Murakami

The song was the late Ishihara Yujiro's "Rusty Knife," and Sakaguchi's singing was so bad that it
gave the lyric a strange new pathos and poignancy. Listening to his version, Suzuki Midori was
reminded that no one ever said it would be easy to go on living in this world; Takeuchi Midori
pondered the noble truth that nobody's life consists exclusively of happy times; Henmi Midori
vowed to remember that it's best to keep an open heart and forgive even those who've
trespassed against us; and Tomiyama Midori had to keep telling herself that hitting rock bottom
is in fact the first step to a hopeful new future. — Ryu Murakami

That was with me for years
feeling I wasn't myself. And I do think I wasn't my real self then. Of course, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a real self. You could ransack your innards looking for the real you and never find it
slice yourself open and all you'll find is blood and muscle and bone. — Ryu Murakami

I wondered if there were planets where it's okay to murder people. I decided there must be, reminding myself that in war, after all, killers are heroes. — Ryu Murakami

You have to watch your step with women these days, Pops. She could be involved with Yakuza or something. Even some of the girls in my class
you should hear the stuff they talk about. Fifteen years old, and there's nothing they don't know. We're not in the age of Peace and Love anymore. — Ryu Murakami

The people your brother killed - well, they all had souls. They weren't Satan. Ryu Yohan wasn't Satan, either. His faith was twisted, that's all. I know now. I know that God is innocent. (2007: 143) — Hwang Sok-yong

Having nothing better to do, meandered off to a coffee shop and sat facing each other for a couple of hours, neither of them talking much but each coming to the general conclusion that the other was a person rather like himself ... — Ryu Murakami

That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this world. — Ryu Murakami

Memories are't like words; they're soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or your vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes — Ryu Murakami

Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary , deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally. — Ryu Murakami

There's always something in miso soup — Ryu Murakami

Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they'd choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease. — Ryu Murakami

Sometimes you can remember everything about an old friend, down to minor details about his behaviour, but for the life of you you can't picture his face. — Ryu Murakami

In heated rooms, he often felt the outlines of his body, the border between him and the external world, grow disturbingly fuzzy. — Ryu Murakami

Ryu laughed. "You know what I mean. A absentminded as you are, it's a true wonder you can be so focused when it comes to kendo."
"I'm also focused when I draw."
"Yeah. The problem is you're still drawing even when you don't have an actual pencil in your hand. — H.J. Brues

It was the perfect time and place for an inherently timid person like him to express his
inner pervert by peeing in public. — Ryu Murakami

But look at Ryu." The wolf had lain down and was gnawing at the stick. "His instincts lean as much toward playing and loving. If he had a mate and cubs, then his instincts would be to protect them at all costs." Scarlet twirled the cord of her hoodie around a finger. "That's what Wolf did. He protected me." She — Marissa Meyer

Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you'd think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this don't understand, he thought. They don't realize that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip. — Ryu Murakami

And just because I've written this book, don't think I've changed. I'm like I was back then, really. — Ryu Murakami

Words themselves aren't that important. Even if somebody says words that shock you, or make you want to kill them, or make you tremble with emotion, the words themselves you tend to forget in time. Words are just tools we use to express or communicate something. — Ryu Murakami

This was a factory, a sorting house. We were no different from dogs and pigs and cows: all of us were allowed to play when we were small, but then, just before reaching maturity, we were sorted and classified. Being a high school student was the first step toward becoming a domestic animal. — Ryu Murakami

Advertising departments, as you know, are crawling with people whose frontal lobes are so underdeveloped that if you flatter them a bit they'll swear shit is platinum. — Ryu Murakami

The Koka Ryu Ninjutsu Densho is a short yet intriguing ninjutsu manual... The manual itself is highly interesting and is a mix of clearly authentic ninja skills and a belief in the power and aid of the gods. It includes ritualistic spells to aid a ninja's work--rituals that are also found in other, unquestionably authentic manuals. — Yoshie Minami

I wonder why people you have to meet have to be such liars. They lie as if their lives depended on it. — Ryu Murakami

American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born japanese. — Ryu Murakami

Malevolence is born of negative feelings like loneliness and sadness and anger. It comes from an emptiness inside you that feels as if it's been carved out with a knife, an emptiness you're left with when something very important has been taken away from you — Ryu Murakami

Yeah. He wants to be a ... what do you call those guys?" "A sommelier?" "Right. Said he wanted to see your collection." "At fifteen he's already decided what he wants to be?" "Lots of guys have." "Is that wise? To limit your options at such a young age? — Ryu Murakami

There is an old saying that goes 'Start by plucking a hair, end by killing a man'. It is also said, 'Two hands must meet to make a sound'. The atrocities that happened here weren't carried out by strangers - it was us, the people who'd once lived together harmoniously in the same village."
"They say it was the superstitious freaks who did it."
"No, it was Satan who did it."
"Come now, what sort of a ghost is that?"
Ryu Yosop replied, "It is the black thing that lives in the heart of every man. — Hwang Sok-yong

The world's worst flavor combination was mango and menthol. — Ryu Murakami

Judging requires a lot of negative energy. When we stop our thoughts from judging another person's hidden motive, intention or character, and simply address our differences, we create a dialogue of peace and reconciliation. — Hwa Sung Ryu

That soft but penetrating voice that caressed your ears and climbed through your brain like a vine. — Ryu Murakami

I thought if I were beautiful enough, all my dreams would come true. But you don't steady beautiful forever; one day you wake up and it's gone, and then where are you? Dreams are made with blood and sweat and tears. — Ryu Murakami

When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home. — Ryu Murakami

TV sounds are all the same; there's no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island. — Ryu Murakami

They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process. — Ryu Murakami

Who knew there were still people like that in this world, though? Everybody wants to talk about themselves, and everybody wants to hear everybody else's story, so we take turns playing reporter and celebrity. 'It must have made you very sad when your own father raped you - can you describe some of your feelings at the time? Yes, I wept and wept, wonder why something like this had to happen to me'. It's like that. Everyone's running around comparing wounds, like bodybuilders showing off their muscles. And what's really unbelievable is that they really believe they can heal the wounds like that, just by putting them on display. — Ryu Murakami

Just before I fell asleep, I had a moment of panic ... — Ryu Murakami

That's what violence was: emotion leaking out from consciousness into the physical world, linking up with the muscles of the arms and shoulders and diaphragm and, inevitably, the face. Stifle emotion during an act of violence and the face becomes a blank, unreadable mask. — Ryu Murakami

Nice person, bad person
that's not the level this girl is at. I can see you're crazy about her and probably won't be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you'd be better off staying away from someone like her. I can't read her exactly, but I can tell you she's either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between. — Ryu Murakami

These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life. This was not their fault, however. The blame lay with a certain ubiquitous spirit of the times, transmitted to them by their respective mothers. And perhaps it goes without saying that this "spirit of the times" was in fact an oppressive value system based primarily upon the absolute certainty that nothing in this world was ever going to change. — Ryu Murakami

They don't realise that they've changed; they think it's the world that changed. — Ryu Murakami

He wakes! The steel giant wakes! Long, long ago he rose from the sea, with the blood of life streaming from his belly. And then they buried him with thunder ... and ... carrots ... at Stonehenge. But now he wakes again. The Age of Rotten Fish is over; the Age of Steel and Bombs is upon us. And he had come to give us life and strength, to free us form these cells, to restore us once again to baseball and ping pong! Sent by God from the Great Beyond!!! — Ryu Murakami

When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I
was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn
toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the
night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my
real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me
and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I
felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness
and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like
spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp
bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your
feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants
carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running. — Ryu Murakami

The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together. — Hwang Sok-yong

When I was taught the Gyokko Ryu Koshijutsu Kihon Gata, there were in this engendering of
fundamental form the eight methods. *I was told that this kihon happo is the origin of all budo.
So I say to you earnestly, you make this the basis and teach it to your students. — Toshitsugu Takamatsu

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

But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it? — Ryu Murakami

Hello, friends," said Princess Winter. Ryu dropped his newest stick onto the pile, then sat down, chest high as though he were showing her proper respect. Scarlet scowled. "Suck-up." Winter — Marissa Meyer

I learned two important things about the sound I was searching for: that it had to be indirect, refracted or muffled in some way; and that the sound had to give the impression that it would continue forever- the sound of someone practicing piano heard faintly from an unknown direction, or the sound of gentle rain outside a window, punctuated by drops falling on the casement. — Ryu Murakami

People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder. — Ryu Murakami

After hanging up the phone Aoyama sank back back on the sofa feeling like a balloon in a warm blue sky. — Ryu Murakami

People who love horror films are people with boring lives ... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news. — Ryu 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

He invited me to his apartment in the wee hours one morning and pulled out a set of children's building blocks. It seems he used to ride around and around on the Yamanote Line with them, building castles on the floor of the train. — Ryu Murakami

Did you know that only a tiny minority of viruses cause illness in humans? No one knows how many viruses there are, but their real role, when you get right down to it, is to aid in mutations, to create diversity among life forms. I've read a lot of books on the subject-when you don't need much sleep you have a lot of time to read-and I can tell you that if it weren't for viruses, mankind would never have evolved on this planet. Some viruses get right inside the DNA and change your genetic code, did you know that? And no one can say for sure that HIV, for example, won't one day prove to have been rewriting our genetic code in a way that's essential to our survival as a race. I'm a man who consciously commits murders and scares the hell out of people and makes them reconsider everything, so I'm definitely malignant, yet I think I play a necessary role in this world. — Ryu Murakami

Very few people of our generation or the next will reach adulthood without experiencing the sort of unhappiness you can't really deal with on your own. We're still in the minority, so the media lump us together as "The Oversensitive Young", or whatever the latest catchphrase is, but eventually that will change. — Ryu Murakami

Sinteen-years -old girls are probably the most sensitive and perceptive group of people in this entire country. — Ryu Murakami

It was around this time that I'd begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people's minds. I'd figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn't know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I'd talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I'd talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I'd talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I'd talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. — Ryu Murakami

Yeah, he'd said, maybe it's just my idea, but really it always hurts, the times it don't hurt is when we just forget, we just forget it hurts, you know, it's not just because my belly's all rotten, everybody always hurts. So when it really starts stabbing me, somehow I feel sort of peaceful, like I'm myself again. — Ryu Murakami

I remembered reading in a hard-boiled detective novel that if you drink in the same place two nights in a row, the bartender and waiters will remember your face. — Ryu Murakami

I'm sure we've all experienced really malevolent feelings once or twice in our lives, the desire to kill somebody,say.but there's always a braking mechanism somewhere along the line that stop us. — Ryu Murakami

An age where you feel like you could love anyone, where you put everything on the line for the smallest of things. Eighteen. Adults say that it's an age where we laugh if a leaf tumbles by. But back then, we were more serious than any adult, more intense, and had our strength tested. 1997. That was how our eighteen was beginning. — Ryu Si-won

Lady #1, Maki, had never once given any thought to what was really right for her in her life, simply believing that if she surrounded herself with super-exclusive things, she'd become a super-exclusive person. — Ryu 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

Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down. — Ryu Murakami

My fingers scrabbled at the smooth leather interior of Ryu's BMW as he missed the exit we needed. Causing him to drop a few more F bombs and slam on the breaks. He then opened what I assume was a rift in the space time continuum in order to hurtle his German made steal cage of doom through said continuum. — Nicole Peeler

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

If everyone could feel as I felt at that moment, dressed in my preppy sweater and McGregor coat and about to set out on a little journey with my Bambi-eyed girlfriend on Christmas Eve, all conflicts in the world would vanish. Mellow smiles would rule the earth. — Ryu Murakami

Two suns burned in a copper sky overhead. One was large and somewhat oblong and gave off a dull orange light. The other was small and possessed a brilliant white incandescence at its core, ringed farther out by a silver corona. Large eruptions of reddish gas flowed from the surface of the orange sun, swirling through the void at a frightening pace, extending toward the smaller, bluish white sun. The flowing gases painted land and sky in startling colors, and whenever the gases wrapped entirely around the smaller sun, the void between them filled with an incandescent brilliance. The light cut the long flatness of space in half, sweeping aside all other illumination and shadow. Then the crimson gas flow would spiral inward and vanish in the blink of an eye, leaving the two suns to shine in the copper sky once more. — Ryu Mitsuse

A person without self-confidence is incapable of being independent, and people who are dependent on their partners always create unhappiness. Always. — Ryu Murakami

She met Ryu's yellow gaze across the way and winked. In response, the wolf raised his nose and howled, a short, joyful sound. "You've made a friend." She — Marissa Meyer

What makes somebody nice or unpleasant to be around is the way they communicate. When people are fucked up, their communication is fucked up. — Ryu Murakami

All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants. — Ryu Murakami

Besides, there's no issue. Not yet, at least. Ryu's in Boston; I'm in Rockabill; Anyan is in absentia. So I'll just keep ignoring everything till I get walloped with it. Then I'll panic and run to you. — Nicole Peeler

We sat side by side on the swings. The creaking sound they made seemed sexier to me than a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. — Ryu Murakami

The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different than the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there — Ryu Murakami

Most of the advice was along the lines of, "If you persevere in your efforts you will surely succeed," which is bullshit, if you ask me. People who turn to stuff like this have probably already persevered and gotten nowhere. — Ryu Murakami

Everybody wants to talk about themselves, and everybody wants to hear everybody else's story, so we take turns playing reporter and celebrity. — Ryu Murakami

His face was smiling, his eyes glittered in the late autumn moonlight, and he emitted a flickering aura that might have triggered seizures in an impartial but sensitive child, and yet he was strangely depressed. — Ryu Murakami

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. — Ryu Murakami

Within two or three years of World War II's end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depend on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things. — Ryu Murakami

She's like smoke:you think you're seeing her clearly enough,but when you reach for her there's nothing there — Ryu Murakami

It is love of my fan's that always makes me stand firm. — Ryu Si-won

I have been given many teachings by Sarutahiko-no-O-Kami. OKami told me, 'By the work of Takehaya Susanowo no Mikoto, you will worship the Ame no Murakumo KuKamisamuhara Ryu O (Kami of Takemusu) and build an Aiki shrine and dojo.' Then I built the Aiki shrine and dojo in Iwama, Ibaragi prefecture in 1940. — Morihei Ueshiba