Quotes from Haruki Murakami

May I give you a piece of advise? ... Don't feel sorry for yourself, only arseholes do that.

waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in an advanced capitalist society

It was hard to accept that she had almost no feelings, maybe none at all, for me as a man. This hurt so bad at times it felt like someone was gouging out my guts with a knife. Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything.

No te compadezcas de ti mismo. Eso sólo lo hacen los mediocres.-Nagasawa

I'm safe inside this container called me. With a little click, the outlines of this being—me—fit right inside and are locked neatly away. Just the way I like it. I'm where I belong.

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

It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes.

Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel any pain anymore that you're in real trouble.

Are there any capitalist cats? Nakata asked

What confused and disappointed me, though, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. A list of her good qualities far outstripped a list of her faults, and certainly far outshone my own, yet there was something missing, something absolutely vital.

Les souvenirs, c'est quelque chose qui vous réchauffe de l'intérieur. Et qui vous déchire violemment le cÅ"ur en même temps.

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can't even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course.

For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny and silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all.

We're all wrong, every one of us.

It was still inchoate, something missing. Something that should be there was appealing to the nonvalidity of absence. And that missing element was rapping on the glass window separating presence and absence. I could make out its wordless cry.

People are awkward creatures. A lot more awkward than you seem to realize.

Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them.

There are some things that can't be explained in this life," Menshiki went on, "and some others that probably shouldn't be explained. Especially when putting them into words ignores what is most crucial.

You must not let fatigue set in, she warns. That is what my mother said. Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself. Good advice. To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called 'mind', what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard. The mind is nothing you use, I say. The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements.

To get irritated is to lose our way in life.

It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye

You are not lost. It's just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed--your self. You must believe in your own powers.

Even if things were the same, people's perception of them might have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter.

It's not so easy for people to end their own lives. It's not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it's all over, they're dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you.