Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be.

All you have to do is wait. Sit tight and wait for the right moment. Not try to change anything by force, just watch the drift of things. Make an effort to cast a fair eye on everything. If you do that, you just naturally know what to do. But everyone's always too busy. They're too talented, their schedules are too full. They're too interested in themselves to think about what's fair.

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.

moartea nu se afla la polul opus al vietii ,ci face parte din viata

The more you think about illusions, the more they'll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion.

The world is full of lonely things, but not many could be lonelier than waking up alone in the morning in a love hotel.

You need to come face-to-face with the past, not as some naive, easily wounded boy, but as a grown-up, independent professional. Not to see what you want to see, but what you must see. Otherwise you'll carry around that baggage for the rest of your life.

The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I've ever met. You've met God? Certainly. I telephone Him every night.

No hay más remedio que ser lo más honesto posible con uno mismo. Ser honesto y, al menos, vivir con cierta libertad. No sé si te será de gran ayuda, pero es lo único que te puedo decir.

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing.

The ground we stand on seems solid enough, but if soemthing happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness

I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.

Death was as silent as the ocean bottom, as sweet as a rose in May.

La linea fragile delle sue labbra era agitata da un lieve tremito che sembrava in accordo col battito del suo cuore e le vibrazioni della sua anima.

That's what we all do : endlessly take the long way around.

A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness.

They weren't fact. They were possibility. Nothing more, nothing less, but the force of the possibility was shattering.

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there - to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.

Fate seems to be taking me in some even stranger directions.

By marrying her, Tony Takitani brought the lonely period of his life to an end. When he awoke in the morning, the first thing he did was look for her. When he found her sleeping next to him, he felt relief. When she wasn't there, he felt anxious and searched the house for her. There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again.

As always, we sit on the narrow steps that lead from the Old Bridge down to the sandbar. A pale silver moon trembles on the face of the water. A wooden boat lashed to a post modulates the sound of the current. Sitting with her, I feel her warm against my arm.

While you're playing yourself out in lonesome dissipation in front of a pinball machine, someone else might be reading through Proust. Still another might be engaged in heavy petting with a girlfriend at a drive-in theater showing of Paths of Courage. The one could well become a writer, witness to the age; the others, a happily married couple. Pinball machines, however, won't lead you anywhere. Just the replay light. Replay, replay, replay...

I study the chessboard and concede defeat. You can gain yourself in five moves says the Colonel. Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.

People leave strange little memories behind when they die.