Haruki Murakami Quotes

You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.

~ Haruki Murakami

Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well . What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle.

~ Haruki Murakami

Dreams are things from the past. They aren't from the future. That wasn't you imprisoned there. You imprison your dreams. You understand?Yeah, I'd say. But I wasn't convinced.

~ Haruki Murakami

Everybody has to start somewhere. You have your whole future ahead of you. Perfection doesn't happen right away.

~ Haruki Murakami

When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.

~ Haruki Murakami

Tell me something, Mari—do you believe in reincarnation?” Mari shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she says. “So you don’t think there’s a life to come?” “I haven’t thought much about it. But it seems to me there’s no reason to believe in a life after this one.” “So once you’re dead there’s just nothing?”“Basically.”“Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.” “Nothingness means there’s absolutely nothing, so maybe there’s no need to understand it or imagine it.” “Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it’s the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it’s like.” “Well, yeah…,” says Mari. “I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff,” Korogi says. “I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you’d look like—a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time.

~ Haruki Murakami

The very thought of such people’s intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of self superiority, and their callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.

~ Haruki Murakami

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

~ Haruki Murakami

But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

~ Haruki Murakami

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us.

~ Haruki Murakami

Words left their mouths to hang frozen in midair.

~ Haruki Murakami

I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind.

~ Haruki Murakami

That's how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Lime the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like rhat, dying doesn't seem like such a big deal.

~ Haruki Murakami

That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust. If I put myself in this person's hands, I'll be OK. If my condition starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he'll notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he'll fix it, he'll tighten the screw again, put all the jumped threads back in place. If we have that sense of trust, our sickness stays away.

~ Haruki Murakami

How can I put this? There's a king of gap between what I think is real and what's really real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-or-other is there, somewhere inside me... like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established for myself. The way a magnet can make a machine go crazy.

~ Haruki Murakami

What i'm trying to say is this. A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propogating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it - even if the person himself wants to stop it.

~ Haruki Murakami

I was a vacant room. Inside, the music produces only a dry, hollow echo.

~ Haruki Murakami

The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed - everything around him felt changed, as if they had all been recast.

~ Haruki Murakami

I think most readers would say the same. Most would choose Midori. And the protagonist, of course, chooses her in the end. But some part of him is always in the other world and he cannot abandon it. It’s a part of him, an essential part. All human beings have a sickness in their minds. That space is a part of them.

~ Haruki Murakami

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells

~ Haruki Murakami

Something will work out tomorrow, I thought. And if not, then tomorrow I'll do some thinking. Ob—la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on.

~ Haruki Murakami

Once you pass a certain age, life becomes noting more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacement never goes well. It’s all very painful- as painful as actually being cut with a knife.

~ Haruki Murakami

I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.

~ Haruki Murakami

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.

~ Haruki Murakami

I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

~ Haruki Murakami

I never trust people with no appetite. It's like they're always holding something back on you.

~ Haruki Murakami

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own - with whatever guts you can muster

~ Haruki Murakami

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

~ Haruki Murakami

I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I'd be left all alone.

~ Haruki Murakami

Maybe you didn't want to get married, or get tied down?'Tsukuru shook his head. 'No, I don't think that was it. I'm the sort of person who craves stability.

~ Haruki Murakami

He sometimes wondered if she had become involved with him just so that she could cry in someone's arms. Maybe she can't cry alone, and that's why she needs me.

~ Haruki Murakami

It wasn't like there was some obvious change. Actually, the problem was more a lack of change. Nothing about her had changed - the way she spoke, her clothes, the topics she chose to talk about, her opinions - they were all the same as before. Their relationship was like a pendulum gradually grinding to a halt, and he felt out of synch.

~ Haruki Murakami

I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive.

~ Haruki Murakami

So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

~ Haruki Murakami

Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence.

~ Haruki Murakami

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess confidence in darkness? In the dark, you can't see.

~ Haruki Murakami

We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear.

~ Haruki Murakami

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.

~ Haruki Murakami

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s what part of it means to be alive. But inside our heads — at least that’s where I imagine it — there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.

~ Haruki Murakami

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

~ Haruki Murakami