Quotes from Haruki Murakami

But it's strange, isn't it? Eri said. What is? That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time.

Why are you staring at me?" she'd ask. "'Cause you're pretty," I'd reply. "You're the first one who's ever said that." "I'm the only one who knows," I'd tell her. "And believe me, I know.

Life is like a box of cookies.

Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose, began the man. You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed.

But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories

The silence grew deeper, so deep that if you listened carefully you might very well catch the sound of the earth revolving on its axis.

Here's what hurst the most, Kafuku said. I didn't truly understand her--or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she's dead and gone. Like a small, locked safe lying at the bottom of the ocean. It hurts a lot. Tatsuki thought for a moment before speaking. But Mr. Kafuku, can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?

Like flowers scattered in a storm, a man's life is a long farewell.

You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, 'Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?

None of us are ever finished. Everyone is always a work in progress.

I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.

It's because of you when I'm in bed in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live another good day.

The passage of time will usually extract the venom of most things and render them harmless

No need to worry. Time is the remedy for your concerns. It is the key for all things that possess form. True, time does not last forever, but as long as you have it, it is remarkably efficacious. So look forward to the future, my friends.

Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.

At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.

A face is like reading a palm. More than the features you're born with, a face is gradually formed over the passage of time, through all the experiences a person goes through, and no two faces are alike.

A theory is a battlefield in your head.

Had I done the right thing by not telling her? Maybe not. Who on earth wanted the right thing anyway? Yet what meaning could there be if nothing was right? If nothing was fair? Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase.

What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example? Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably.

Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.

You know what I think? she says. That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the rimes.