Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Whenever I wake up in a strange house I always feel as if the wrong soul got stuffed into the wrong body.

I don't think most people would like my personality. There might be a few -- very few, I would imagine- who are impressed by it, but rarely would anyone like it.

When I was with him, I felt as if my life had finally come back to me.

I plant my elbows on the kitchen table, prop up my chin and think: When the hell did the compass needle get out of whack and lead my life astray?

Happiness is a warm friendship.

But this thing, whatever it was, this mistlike something, hung there inside my body like a certain kind of potential. I wanted to give it a name, but the word refused to come to mind. I'm terrible at finding the right words for things. I'm sure Tolstoy would have been able to come up with exactly the right word

It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take." (p. 318).

Things like this happen sometimes in our lives," I told him. "Inexplicable, illogical events that nevertheless are deeply disturbing. I guess we need to not think about them, just close our eyes and get through them. As if we were passing under a huge wave.

You don't get it she said ''Don't get what? ''We are one ''We are one? Tengo asked with a shock. ''We wrote the book together Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri's fingers against his palm. ... ''That's true. We wrote Air Crysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we'll be eaten together.

The sky was painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably absorbed the sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of things. Perceptions, for example.

somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected.

Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face.

she was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn't a reason in the world not to find her appealing.

La vida es como una caja de galletas

Eppure, se avessi potuto ricominciare da capo, ero sicuro che avrei rifatto le stesse identiche cose. Perché quello ero io: quella vita in cui continuavo a perdere tutto. Non avrei potuto fare altro che diventare me stesso, nient'altro che me stesso, con tutte le persone che mi avrebbero lasciato, o che io avrei lasciato, con tutti i bei sentimenti e le magnifiche qualità e i sogni che sarebbero andati distrutti, o perlomeno che avrei dovuto ridimensionare.

Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it. -from Hear the Wind Sing

Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honour of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

En una caja de galletas hay muchas clases distintas de galletas. Algunas te gustan y otras no. Al principio te comes las que te gustan, y al final sólo quedan las que no te gustan. Pues yo, cuando lo estoy pasando mal, siempre pienso: Tengo que acabar con esto cuanto antes y ya vendrán tiempos mejores. Porque la vida es como una caja de galletas.

It was Aomame's firm belief that the human body was a temple, to be kept as strong and beautiful and clean as possible, whatever one might enshrine there.

With my own hands, I had to construct this thing I called 'I' –or, rather, make the things that constituted me.

When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It's a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That's why I want to write a book.

Lo que sea que estés buscando no va a llegar en la forma que lo esperas

Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere.