Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Where are you now?' Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

If you want everything to be nice and straight all the time, then go live in a world made with a triungular ruler.

I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.

Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting out there was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

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.

Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.

En ese momento, por fin lo captó. En lo más profundo de sí mismo,Tsukuru Tazaki lo comprendió: los corazones humanos no se unen sólo mediante la armonía. Se unen, mas bien, herida con herida. Dolor con dolor. Fragilidad con fragilidad. No existe silencio sin un grito desgarrador, no existe perdón sin que se derrame sangre, no existe aceptación sin pasar por un intenso sentimiento de pérdida. Ésos son los cimientos de la verdadera armonía.

Why do you read books?" he asked. "Why do you drink beer?" I replied without glancing in his direction

Count your blessings

Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea?

However miserable your situation, there is always something to learn.

I'm alone inside the world of the story, my favorite feeling in the world.

And I really wanted to see you, too, she said. When I couldn't see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You're a part of me; I'm a part of you.

I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives – they're the ones you have to watch out for.

I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialities.

Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself.

I really wanted to see you," I said. "And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn't see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You're a part of me; I'm a part of you. You know, somewhere—I'm not at all sure where—I think I cut something's throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone.

At times like this, adults need a drink

He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled "Pending" and postponed any further consideration.

Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

There are certain thoughts that, no matter what, you have to keep inside.

One day, I lost sight of her. I happened to glance away for a moment, and when I turned back, she had disappeared.

It's a waste of time to think about things you can't know

When people photograph an object, they often put a pack of cigarettes next to it to give the viewer a sense of the object's actual size, but the pack of cigarettes next to the images in my memory expanded and contracted, depending on my mood at the time. Like the objects and events in constant flux, or perhaps in opposition to them, what should have been a fixed yardstick inside the framework of my memory seemed instead to be in perpetual motion.