Haruki Murakami Quotes

539 Sourced Quotes

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

Haruki Murakami
She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.

Haruki Murakami
I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

Haruki Murakami
He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye.

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

Haruki Murakami
Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.

Haruki Murakami
I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell.

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
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.

Haruki Murakami
The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground

Haruki Murakami
It doesn't matter how old I get, but as long as I continue to live I'll always discover something new about myself.

Haruki Murakami
Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.

Haruki Murakami
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

Haruki Murakami
In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.

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

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
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

Haruki Murakami
One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this. There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. It's strange.

Haruki Murakami
It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.

Haruki Murakami
This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.

Haruki Murakami
Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.

Haruki Murakami
Whenever I meet people for the first time, I get them to talk for ten minutes. Then I size them up from the exact opposite perspective of all they've told me. Do you think that's crazy? No, I said, shaking my head, I'd guess your method works quite well.

Haruki Murakami
Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

Haruki Murakami
I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.

Haruki Murakami
The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.

Haruki Murakami
Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but loose you.

Haruki Murakami
Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core— a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.

Haruki Murakami
What's more, you're loads better than you think you are. So why is it I get to thinking that way? I puzzled. That's because you're only half-living. she said briskly. The other half is still untapped somewhere.

Haruki Murakami
That's how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Haruki Murakami
What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.

Haruki Murakami