Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Changes in a person's feelings aren't regulated by custom, logic, or the law. They're fluid, unstable, free to spread their wings and fly away. Like migratory birds have no concept of borders between countries.

You finally fall asleep. And when you wake up, it's true. You are part of a brand-new world.

Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.

That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.

True, luck may rule over parts of a person's life and luck may cast patches of shadow across the ground of our being, but where there's a WILL-- much less a strong will to swim thirty laps or run twenty kilometers -- there's a way to overcome most any trouble with whatever stepladders you have around.

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought.

And besides, thought Yoshida, If it was all right for God to test man, why was it wrong for man to test God?

In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry.

But pure, unadulterated feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to the earth— firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon.

Perhaps I'm just too painstaking a type of person, but I can't grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing.

Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist.

At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating.

Pero, si se me permite formular una anodina teoria general, en nuestra vida imperfecta las cosas inutiles son, en cierta medida, necesarias.

I'm not totally uncompetitive. It's just that for some reason I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn't matter what field you're talking about -- beating somebody else just doesn't do it for me. I'm much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine.

I'm confused. Really confused. And it's a lot deeper than you think. Deeper… darker… colder. But tell me something. How could you have slept with me that time? How could you have done such a thing? Why didn't you just leave me alone?

You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble.

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even it's imperfection.

What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It's a miracle, a cosmic miracle.

You know, Junpei, everything in the world has its reasons for doing what it does.

Tell me," said Sumire, "have you ever felt confused about what you're doing, like it's not right?" "I spend more time being confused than not," I answered.

Just remember, life is a box of cookies.

I knew that life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it.

Well, look at it another way: why shouldn't there be cats in a zoo? I said. They're animals, too, right? Cats and dogs are your run-of-the-mill-type animals. Nobody's going to pay money to see them, he said. Just look around you-they're everywhere. Same thing with people.

Even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking about one unrelated thing after another. I don't know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want to let my thoughts wander freely.