Quotes from Haruki Murakami

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.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.

The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.

If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.

I've been lonely for so long. And I've been hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldn't have had to take all these detours to get here.' Tengo shook his head. 'I don't think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time. For both of us. [...] We needed that much time.... to understand how lonely we really were.

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

The sad truth is that certain types of things can't go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can't go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that's how it will stay forever.

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.

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.

Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of. Please be careful, Mr.Okada. It is very dangerous. Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult think in the world to shake off.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.

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.

It's easy to forget things you don't need anymore.

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.

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.

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.

No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.

No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.

I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person's attitude so that they wouldn't get any closer. I didn't easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music

To know one's own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one's own face with one's own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one's reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.