Haruki Murakami Quotes

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

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.

~ Haruki Murakami

And our ages never bothered her from the very beginning. I was married, but that didn’t matter, either. She seemed to consider things like age and family and income to be of the same a priori order as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one’s fingernails. The sort of thing that thinking about won’t change one bit. And that much said, well, she had a point.

~ Haruki Murakami

It’s really difficult to talk about dead people, but it’s even harder to talk about dead young women. It’s because from the time they die, they’ll be young forever. On the other hand, for us, the survivors, every year, every month, every day, we get older.Sometimes, I feel like I can feel myself aging from one hour to the next. It’s a terrible thing, but that’s reality.

~ Haruki Murakami

To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him.

~ Haruki Murakami

Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody.

~ Haruki Murakami

The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.

~ Haruki Murakami

All he could do was wait like this, patiently, until it grew light out and the birds awoke and began their day. All he could do was trust in the birds, in all the birds, with their wings and beaks.

~ Haruki Murakami

You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.

~ Haruki Murakami

At some point paradise would be lost.

~ Haruki Murakami

A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over.

~ Haruki Murakami

Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form.

~ Haruki Murakami

It was––how shall I put it?––a painfully solitary building. Let me explain. Say we have a concept. It goes without saying that there will be slight exceptions to that norm. Now, over time these exceptions spread like stains until finally they form a separate concept. To which other exceptions crop up. It was that kind of building, some ancient life form that had evolved blindly, toward who knows what end.

~ Haruki Murakami

The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer, because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.

~ Haruki Murakami

I don't think most people would like my personality. There might be a few -- very few, I would imagine- who are impressed by it, but rarely would anyone like it.

~ Haruki Murakami

Maybe that's why people don't like you. You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makses some people angry.

~ Haruki Murakami

The world is full of ways and means to waste time

~ Haruki Murakami

Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.

~ Haruki Murakami

The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.

~ Haruki Murakami

Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said.“Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.

~ Haruki Murakami

Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.

~ Haruki Murakami

When you sneak into somebody’s backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts 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

It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.

~ Haruki Murakami

Nestled next to me, she nodded. “I’m fine. As long as I take the medicine. So don’t worry.” She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “But don’t ask me anything, okay? Why that happened.”“Understood. No questions,” I said.“Thank you very much for today,” she said.“What part of today?”“For taking me to the river. For giving me water from your mouth. For putting up with me.”I looked at her. Her lips were right in front of me. The lips I had kissed as I gave her water. And once more those lips seemed to be seeking me. Slightly parted, with her beautiful white teeth barely visible. I could still feel her soft tongue, which I’d touched slightly as I gave her water. I found it hard to breathe, and I couldn’t think. My body burned. She wants me, I thought. And I want her.

~ Haruki Murakami

Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.

~ Haruki Murakami

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell.

~ Haruki Murakami

The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird

~ Haruki Murakami

I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a dream.

~ Haruki Murakami

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

~ Haruki Murakami

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

~ Haruki Murakami

Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle, running across someone to whom you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been mistake to label this love. It was more like total empathy.

~ Haruki Murakami

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

~ Haruki Murakami

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.

~ Haruki Murakami

A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of-- that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of imperfect.

~ Haruki Murakami

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.

~ Haruki Murakami

Are there any capitalist cats? Nakata asked

~ Haruki Murakami

I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.

~ Haruki Murakami

If I sound as if I'm always predicting ominous things, it's because I'm a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and you'll see what I mean.

~ Haruki Murakami

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I’d close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people’s voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I’d probably never know.

~ 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