Quotes from Haruki Murakami

I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it - A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.

Once you've hidden something, you have to keep it hidden.

I would begin to think that I wanted to do something, but then I would become incapable of distinguishing between the probable results of doing it and of not doing it. I often get the feeling that things around me have lost their proper balance, though it could be that my perceptions are playing tricks on me.

Está empezando un nuevo día. Quizá sea un día como los demás, o quizá sea un día relevante que, por diferentes razones, quede grabado en la memoria. En cualquier caso, por el momento, todo el mundo tiene ante sí un hoja en blanco, sin nada escrito.

There's nothing at all in here, she said much later, her voice hoarse. I'm cleaned out. Empty.

Your life's just begun and there's a ton of things out in the world you've never laid eyes on. Things you never could imagine.

I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.

It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a root. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.

This layers, like some kind of transparent sponge kind of thing, stands there between Eri Asai and me, and the words that come out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens, the sponge sucks almost all the nutrients right out of them.

It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird came to my yard to wind its spring, the world descendedmore deeply into chaos.

I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him enough

Komatsu's view is that there are always two sides to everything, Tengo said. A good side and a not-so-bad side.

But utopias don't exist, of course, anywhere in any world. Like alchemy or perpetual motion.

Better not to think at all than to think halfway.

If possible, I would like my readers to savor that same emotion when they read my books. I want to open a window in their souls and let the fresh air in. This is what I think of, and hope for, as I write—purely and simply.

My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life.

we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not

M?runÈ›iÈ™urile pe care le gândeÈ™ti cu propria-È›i minte sunt mai importante decât marile idei emise de alÈ›ii.

Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some thirty-six good twists by the time I've gotten up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, Ok, let's make this day another good one.

This life is nothing but a short, painful dream.

It was as if he felt that the black symbols flowing from his brush onto the pure white paper could somehow lay bare the workings of his heart.

Lampreys think very lamprey-like thoughts. About lamprey-like topics in a context that's very lamprey-like. There are no words for those thoughts. They belong to the world of water. It's like when we were in the womb. We were thinking things in there, but we can't express those thoughts in the language we use out here. Right?

It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became aware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they really were happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.