Quotes from Haruki Murakami

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.

Our lives are like a complex musical score. Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange signs. It's next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and could then transpose them into the correct sounds, there's no guarantee that people would correctly understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy. Why must the workings of people's lives be so convoluted?

For example, the wind has its reasons. We just don't notice as we go about our lives. But then, at some point, we are made to notice. The wind envelops you with a certain purpose in mind, and it rocks you. The wind knows everything that's inside you. And not just the wind. Everything, including a stone. They all know us very well. From top to bottom. It only occurs to us at certain times. And all we can do is go with those things. As we take them in, we survive, and deepen.

So in the end maybe that's the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves." Takatsuki

Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?

Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.

Any one 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' like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time. It's just a natural feeling. You're not the person who discovered that feeling, so don't try to patent it, okay?

I've never once thought about how I was going to die," she said. "I can't think about it. I don't even know how I'm going to live.

As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around.

You're wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this. I believe you, she whispers after a moment. Please find my mind.

I'm all alone, but I'm not lonely.

It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.

Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?

I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

I don't know what it means to live.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?

When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.

In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,' she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn't surprise me if she wrote it down. So what does that really mean? In simple terms. I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently. I think it means, I say, that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms.

I'm in no position to hand down any advice, he said, but there's a rule I follow when I don't know what to do. A rule? If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn't, go for the one without form. That's my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it's hard going at the time.

You're really cute, Midori," I corrected myself. "What do you mean really cute?" "So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up.