The Wind Up Bird Chronicle Quotes & Sayings

I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray? — Haruki Murakami

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'. — Richard Dawkins

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. — Haruki Murakami

But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world - by a teacher, a writer, anyone - is a judgement. The judgement that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important. — Howard Zinn

Tolerance is carved into the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intolerance should not be carved into the U.S. Constitution. — Jay Inslee

What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it. — George Bernard Shaw

Do you want to talk about it?" I ask softly, afraid to pry but wanting him to share what deep, dark secret has a hold on him. Me playing Ana to his Christian. — K. Bromberg

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it - the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. — William Kingdon Clifford

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 ... I'm standing still, and I can't find the image.
- Toru — Haruki Murakami

I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling. — Haruki Murakami

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality. — Haruki Murakami

In these home affairs things I think occasionally it's the duty of politicians on both sides to turn round to the tabloids and right-wing newspapers and say 'you have your facts wrong and you're whipping up facts which are inaccurate — Kenneth Clarke

...mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division... — Charles Dickens

Peter Mandelson is one of the most odious, self-satisfied, misogynistic men I have ever met. Compellingly, fascinatingly horrible. — Jemima Khan

If you ever meet a higher being, do not worship it; only try to be its friend! Worship is primitiveness and no higher and developed being likes worshipping! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Strange as it may seem - or perhaps it does not seem so strange - they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself. — Haruki Murakami

Maybe it's been like that for you till now. But you're not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It's simple. It's your right ... right? — Haruki Murakami

That's all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don't have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you can't follow them all the way to the end. — Haruki Murakami

I was enveloped in numbness, and absence of feeling so deep the bottom was lost from view. — Haruki Murakami

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast; Is that portentous phrase, I told you so. — Lord Byron

Kid. You just made the last mistake of your life.'
'God,' I said. 'I wish. — Jim Butcher

I feel that one of the best things a person can do for another is to create a job. So you do OK commercially, and then you try to make a difference of some sort. — Craig Newmark

From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain. — Haruki Murakami