Quotes from Haruki Murakami

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.

When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you're worth.

Wherever there's hope there's a trial. You're exactly right. Absolutely. Hope, however, is limited, and generally abstract, while there are countless trials, and they tend to be concrete. That is also something I had to learn on my own.

If you look at things from a distance, most anything looks beautiful.

Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)

The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground

I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.

And in that moment, he was finally able to accept it all. In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

El conocimiento de la verdad no alivia la tristeza que sentimos al perder a un ser querido. Ni la verdad, ni la sinceridad, ni la fuerza, ni el cariño son capaces de curar esa tristeza. Lo único que puede hacerse es atravesar este dolor esperando aprender algo de él, aunque todo lo que uno haya aprendido no le sirva para nada la próxima vez que la tristeza lo visite de improviso.

You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur...bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first.

I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anybody else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too.

Everything in life is a metaphor.

We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.

When I first met you I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time running away for all you're worth.

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage

We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.

Every person has their own colour.

People can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. You clearly belong to the latter. Your fate is and will always be the fate of a dreamer.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.

There's only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes.

That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.

Some things in life are just to complicated to explain in any language.' Olga was absolutely right, Tsukuru thought as he sipped his wine. Not just to explain to others, but to explain to yourself. Force yourself to try to explain it, and you create lies.

Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.

You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.--Nimit in Thailand