Quotes from Haruki Murakami

I was reborn, she said, her hot breath brushing his ear. You were reborn, Tengo said. Because I died once. You died once, Tengo repeated. On a night when there was a cold rain falling, she said. Why did you die? So I would be reborn like this. You would be reborn, Tengo said. More or less, she whispered quietly. In all sorts of forms.

I'm struck by how pitiful and pointless this little container called me is, what a lame, shabby being I am. I feel like everything I've ever done in life has been a total waste.

Not being bored means not having to think about a lot of stupid stuff.

People are strange when you're a stranger.

Properly speaking, should any individual ever have exact, clear knowledge of his own core consciousness? I wouldn't know, I said. Nor would we, said the scientists.

Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn't understand at first. And that becomes the cream of your life. The rest is boring and worthless.

The most dangerous creature here would have to be me. So maybe I'm just scared of my own shadow.

If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment.

Of course, winning is much better than losing. No argument there. But winning or losing doesn't affect the weight and value of the time. It's the same time, either way. A minute is a minute, an hour is an hour. We need to cherish it. We need to deftly reconcile ourselves with time, and leave behind as many precious memories as we can—that's what's the most valuable.

When the time comes, everybody's got to end up where they belong. Only me, I didn't have a place to call my own. It's like musical chairs.

Everything in life is metaphor.... We accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings. Irony deepens a person, helps them mature. It's the entrance to salvation....

Sometimes, I imagine how great it would be if we could live our lives without bothering other people.

The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter

Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow

She didn't answer. Instead, she smiled sweetly. It was a smile so radiant that the air seemed to thin around it.

At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes the past.

Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once.

She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything's going to be all right. you've made it past Dead Man's Curve and you're out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage of acute loss.

Nobody chooses to evolve. It's like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what's happening until they hit, then it's too late.

No, we weren't lovers, but in a way we had opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for--and to do it so unconsciously.

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent of old Polish films.

She and I would trade books, talk endlessly, drink cheap whiskey, engage in unremarkable sex. You know, the stuff of everyday.