Quotes from Haruki Murakami

I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.

She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw.

Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free?

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it'd lose even its imperfection.

It's like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.

He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye.

Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes.

I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.

I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.

It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit.

People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.

And her sleep was too long and deep for that:so deep that she left her normal reality behind.

I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least.

No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with.

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Nakata's empty inside... Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most

The world isn't that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It's people who are turned upside down.

The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she's gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word that you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn't last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

Whether you want to or not. But the place you return to is always slightly different from the place you left. That's the rule. It can never be exactly the same." A

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.