Murakami's Quotes

I can't afford to take responsibilities for others' lives. It's all I can do to bear the weight of my own life and my own loneliness. — Haruki Murakami

Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all. — Haruki Murakami

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink. — Haruki Murakami

I think most people live in fiction ... That's how you keep your fragile body intact. — Haruki Murakami

We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all. — Haruki Murakami

What's important is the will to win. In the real world we can't always win. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. — Haruki Murakami

Good ones like her are hard to find. And she's a lot more fragile than she looks. — Haruki Murakami

She looks clumsy, beautiful. It's a beauty that could pierce the most delicate regions of the heart of the viewer. — Haruki Murakami

Friends don't need the intervention of a third party. Friendship's a voluntary thing. — Haruki Murakami

That's the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain. — Haruki Murakami

No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you'll never see reflected what's inside. — Haruki Murakami

I think he wants to have a different personality to be somebody different from who he's been up till now — Haruki Murakami

The world isn't that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It's people who are turned upside down. — Haruki Murakami

There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart. — Haruki Murakami

What's really important in life is always the things that are secondary. — Haruki Murakami

When it's raining like this, it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. — Haruki Murakami

I nodded and sipped my beer. "That's about the size of it," I said. That was about the size of it. — Haruki Murakami

For her, loneliness is something you have others remove for you. And once it's gone, everything's okay. Doesn't go any further. I can't live that way. — Haruki Murakami

That's what the world is , after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories. — 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

It's a thrill to look at the clear night sky and discover a new star before anybody else sees it. — Haruki Murakami

All he felt was sorrow, as if he'd been abandoned at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. That's all it was - sorrow. That, and simple physical pain. — Haruki Murakami

I think it's an amazing achievement to find even one specific thing that you're interested in. — Haruki Murakami

It's no fun growing old, no fun at all. The drawers where you store memories get harder to open. — Haruki Murakami

Sometimes I talk to people. A lot of the time, though, it's just a letdown. There aren't many people out there worth knowing. — Haruki Murakami

You know what it's like when you're trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake? — Haruki Murakami

Like boarding a train running parallel. That's what disappearing is. — Haruki Murakami

Afterward, Tsukuru Tazaki's life was changed forever, as if a sheer ridge had divided the original vegetation into two distinct biomes. — Haruki Murakami

If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment. — Haruki Murakami

There's nothing at all in here," she said much later, her voice hoarse. "I'm cleaned out. Empty. — Haruki Murakami

Well, with facts what's important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary. — Haruki Murakami

Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist - in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that's what I did. — Haruki Murakami

The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach. — Haruki Murakami

Proust's In Search of Lost Time? — Haruki Murakami

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. — Haruki Murakami

If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. — Haruki Murakami

All I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody's reach. A place beyond the flow of time. — Haruki Murakami

There's nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you don't fit the stereotype yet. — Haruki Murakami

It's not so strange that when your memories change, the world changes. — Haruki Murakami

No, it's not sick. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said.
So hold me. Now. Right here. — Haruki Murakami

There's nothing left here. Not one thing left for you. — Haruki Murakami

It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain. — Haruki Murakami

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

There's no such thing as absolutes. — Haruki Murakami

In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster. — Haruki Murakami

Things change every day, Mr Nakata. With each new dawn it's not the same world as the day before. And you're not the same person you were, either. — Haruki Murakami

When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person that walked in. That's what the storm is all about. — Haruki Murakami

Champagne's completely useless, you know," he said. "The only good part is the moment you pop the cork. — Haruki Murakami

Every person has his set routines when it comes to thinking and acting, and where there's a routine, there's a weak point. — Haruki Murakami

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. — Haruki Murakami

Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it's like. — Haruki Murakami

it's a fine moon', she repeated — Haruki Murakami

It's a waste of time to think about things you can't know, and things you can't confirm even if you know them. — Haruki Murakami

This was his favorite time of day, reading to his heart's content before going to sleep. When he tired of reading, he would fall asleep. — Haruki Murakami

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all. — Haruki Murakami

It's a funny thing sensing someone else's sex drive. After a while, you get to mistaking it for your own. — Haruki Murakami

No matter how tired the body gets, one must never let the exhaustion enter one's thoughts. — Haruki Murakami

Grandfather always said school's a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either. — Haruki Murakami

It's not easy, either psychologically or practically, to keep tweaking the truth to make it all fit together. — Haruki Murakami

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough. — Haruki Murakami

Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek a kind of fairness. — Haruki Murakami

A deserted library in the morning - there's something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully. — Haruki Murakami

A person's destiny is something you look back at afterwards, not something to be known in advance. — Haruki Murakami

Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with. — Haruki Murakami

To a greater or lesser extent, everybody's always being ordered and threatened and pushed around. There may not be anything better we could hope for. — Haruki Murakami

How you think and feel's always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even. p.498 — Haruki Murakami

You like sequences," Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark. "To me, they're like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them. — Haruki Murakami

There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order. — 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

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives. — Haruki Murakami

Like dark, soft water, sadness took over Aomame's heart, soundlessly, and with no warning. — Haruki Murakami

Guns are like cars: you can trust a good used one better than one that's brand-new. — Haruki Murakami

Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it's not the same as in daytime. — Haruki Murakami

What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, It's all your fault! — Haruki Murakami

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

It's just that the chaos has changed shape. The giraffe and the bear have traded hats, and the bear's switched scarves with the zebra. — Haruki Murakami

When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out - that's the real world, — Haruki Murakami

The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn't going to be very
useful in the real world, that's for sure. — Haruki Murakami

It's difficult to teach how to write novels, but teaching swimming is just as hard. — Haruki Murakami

It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished. — Haruki Murakami

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage — Haruki Murakami

Where I'm living is not a storybook world. It's the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes. — Haruki Murakami

It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart. — Haruki Murakami

It's sometimes hard to avoid losing. Nobody's going to win all the time. — Haruki Murakami

Barney Bigard's clarinet, — Haruki Murakami

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration. — Haruki Murakami

I'm the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she's the sea. — Haruki Murakami

The world's full of groundless ill will. I'll never understand it, you'll never understand it, but it exists all the same. — Haruki Murakami

For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but for me she's just a clumsy girl. — Haruki Murakami

You finally fall asleep. And when you wake up, it's true. You are part of a brand-new world. — Haruki Murakami

People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. — Haruki Murakami

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

But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it's right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that's how I became the person I am now. — Haruki Murakami

The only way to understand what's really fair is to take a long-range view of things. — Haruki Murakami

When you're always scheming about ways to make money, it's like a part of you is lost. — Haruki Murakami

A secret's a secret because you don't let people in on it. — Haruki Murakami

John Dowland's instrumental piece "Lachrimae — Haruki Murakami

You're thinking about how it's morning now or night and the next thing you know, you're old. — Haruki Murakami

The world's filled with things I don't know about. — Haruki Murakami

There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else. — Haruki Murakami