Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Sheep hurt my father, and through my father, sheep have also hurt me.

The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.

I believe that love is the indispensable fuel that allows us to go on living. Someday that love may end. Or it may never amount to anything. But even if love fades away, even if it's unrequited, you can still hold on to the memory of having loved someone, of having fallen in love with someone. And that's a valuable source of warmth.

It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.

I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.

I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You're born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you're both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities?...One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin...

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

I'm just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain.

There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.

You're here," I continued. "At least you look as if you're here. But maybe you aren't. Maybe it's just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you've hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?

Rain falls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end, every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.

Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.

Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.

S? dÄ© ng??i ta suy nghÄ© má»™t cách nghiêm túc v? chuy?n h? s?ng trên ??i ?? làm gì là b?i h? bi?t má»™t lúc nào Ä'ó mình s? ch?t.

Still, in the end, we all die just the same.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. Are memories such an important thing? It depends, she replies, and closes her eyes. In some cases, they're the most important thing there is.

La muerte no existe en contraposición a la vida sino como parte de ella.

April was too lonely a month to spend alone. In April, everyone around me looked happy. People would throw their coats off and enjoy each other's company in the sunshine—talking, playing catch, holding hands. But I was always by myself

So just because I don't exist in the sheep man's world, it doesn't mean that I don't exist at all.

When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress?

As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

Maybe in a few years I'll be able to explain things better, but after a few years it probably won't matter anymore, will it?

You lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you're living a different kind of life there. In a world that's inside you.