Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan.
THE MOST FAMOUS QUOTES BY HARUKI MURAKAMI.
Here is A selection of some of Haruki Murakami most famous quotes: Haruki Murakami Quotes about Life, Love & happiness. Quotes about time, memories and loneliness by Haruki Murakami.
Haruki Murakami Quotes and Sayings
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.
If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.
And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.
I think you still love me, but we can't escape the fact that I'm not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I'm not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I'm not angry, either. I should be, but I'm not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.
What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.
No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.
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?
I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.
Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.
Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.
It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.
I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.
Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.
But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what 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 awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.
But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.
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.
Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.
I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.
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.
Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.
But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive.
Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
In everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive.
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul?
here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.
In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.
Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.
Letters are just pieces of paper," I said. "Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.
I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.
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.
Not just beautiful, though - the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.
Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had.
The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.
As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.
Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.
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.
Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.
'For a while' is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting.
That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.
What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.
Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes.
Only the Dead stay seventeen forever.
A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.
Chance encounters are what keep us going.
Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can't buy.
If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.
No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.
I'm a very ordinary human being; I just happen to like reading books.
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.
Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never age, and certain memories can never fade.
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.
No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.
So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
What makes us the most normal, said Reiko, is knowing that we're not normal.
Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.
I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.
Even if we could turn back, we'd probably never end up where we started.
I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.
It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.
When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.
The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.
I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.
You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.
If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.
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.
What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.
Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there's no such thing as coincidence.
Find me now. Before someone else does.
Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment. Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.
So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.
I'm not so weird to me.
Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.
In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.
Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern.
Not that we were incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.
In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.
For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.
Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.
She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.
Everyone may be ordinary, but they're not normal.
Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.
It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.
I am nothing. I'm like someone who's been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.
There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.
What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus.
Have you ever had that feeling—that you'd like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?
For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense?
But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.
As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.
Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?
Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you - you should control them.
I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.
Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.
Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.
We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel.
There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.
If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.
The light of morning decomposes everything.
If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.
Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.
But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.
All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.
Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely.
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.
I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.
It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.
Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.
A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.
No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.
Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble.
I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.
In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.
If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well.
If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings.
Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.
When you are used to the kind of life -of never getting anything you want - you stop knowing what it is you want.
With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.
Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell.
Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.
Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.
Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.
A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.
As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.
Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.
I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.
Say it before you run out of time. Say it before it's too late. Say what you're feeling. Waiting is a mistake.
You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.
I get up early in the morning, 4 o'clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that's enough. In the afternoon, I run.
But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?
Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.
Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.
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