Quotes from Haruki Murakami

It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.

Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It is like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. Things will go where they are supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it is time for them to be hurt. Life is like that.

Of course, they're not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool.

What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, "It's all your fault!

I stare at her chest. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. I'm the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she's the sea. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story

If a person remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but it's like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It's hard to go back to the original shape.

Person A understand Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.

The world's crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I'm just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that will never come true.

let the wind change direction a little bit, and their cries turned to whispers.

But the silence spoke volumes.

I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?

If I had to say anything it'd be this: Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.

Think it over carefully. This is very important, I say, because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.

She was seriously in love, but she never made demands.

What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.

If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back.

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you can forget, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.

But maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?" "No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days," Komatsu said. "Wouldn't it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?

I think certain types of processes don't allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform—or perhaps distort—yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality.

At my core, there is nothing. Neither is it parched wastelands. At my core, there is love. I'll go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo forever --- his strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.