Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.

For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all.

When it's raining like this, said Naoko, it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.

Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.

A person's last moments are an important thing. You can't choose how you're born but you can choose how you die.

Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

I've never met a girl who thinks like you. A lot of people tell me that, she said, digging at a cuticle. But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything is such a pain!

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.

What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.

My shadow is only half of what it should be. Everyone has their shortcomings.

The strength I'm looking for isn't the type where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that kind of power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortunes, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

All of us are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world.

The thing I'm most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I'm going to do. Of not knowing what I'm doing right now

It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person.

Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death? I guess it depends on how you die.

When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.

I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?

You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, it'll stick its head out and say 'Hi.' You don't seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else.

You don't get it, do you? I said. "It's not a question of 'what then'. Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that's all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?

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.