Haruki Murakami Quotes

539 Sourced Quotes

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.

Haruki Murakami
I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.

Haruki Murakami
I go by the gut. I might not appear to have any talent but I've got plenty of gut instinct.

Haruki Murakami
Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.

Haruki Murakami
The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of my lungs.

Haruki Murakami
Pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.

Haruki Murakami
To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime.

Haruki Murakami
And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city

Haruki Murakami
Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

Haruki Murakami
Okay, let's put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it's alright if I don't sleep with you. What I'm saying is I'd like to be as fair as possible. I don't want to force anything on anybody, any more than I'd want anything forced on me. It's enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

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
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
I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.

Haruki Murakami
It occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work. It's just reality. Just housework. Just a home. Like running a simple machine. Once you learn to run it, it's just a matter of repetition. You push this button and pull that lever. You adjust a gauge, put on the lid, set the timer. The same thing, over and over.

Haruki Murakami
As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.

Haruki Murakami
You said that the mind is like the wind but perhaps it is we who are like the wind Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying.

Haruki Murakami
Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something. "Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. See you again sometime.

Haruki Murakami
It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.

Haruki Murakami
Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.

Haruki Murakami
She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people's hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what's at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.

Haruki Murakami
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical

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
I'm in no position to hand down any advice," he said, "but there's a rule I follow when I don't know what to do." "A rule?" "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. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it's hard going at the time.

Haruki Murakami
You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less.

Haruki Murakami
I don't care about the time I run. I can try all I want, but I doubt I'll ever be able to run the way I used to. I'm ready to accept that. It's not one of your happier realities, but that's what happens when you get older. Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

Haruki Murakami
Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas - none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bare it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't.

Haruki Murakami
Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you.

Haruki Murakami
I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing..

Haruki Murakami
I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.

Haruki Murakami