Quotes from Haruki Murakami

We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.

Of course, she must be sleeping, sleeping deeply, wrapped in the darkness of that strange little world of hers.

She's got to be a ghost. First of all, she's just too beautiful. Her features are gorgeous, but it's not only that. She's so perfect I know she can't be real. She's like a person who stepped right out of a dream. The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness –a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression.

I have to somehow get connected to reality again, he thought, or else I won't be me anymore. I'll become a man who doesn't exist.

Nobody's easier to fool, Ushikawa thought, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

Writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness. -from Hear the Wind Sing

She looks clumsy, beautiful. It's a beauty that could pierce the most delicate regions of the heart of the viewer.

We had been playing our assigned roles on the office stage, but stepping down from the stage, abandoning the images that we had been projecting there, we were both just unstable, awkward lumps of flesh, warm pieces of meat kitted out with digestive tracts and hearts and brains and reproductive organs.

I was impressed by the variety of dreams and goals that life could offer.

Because, in the final analysis, the language we speak constitutes who we are as people.

Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what's written there, but it's hard.

Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it.

Pero así como no hay que temer a los moldes, tampoco hay que tener miedo de romperlos.

To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don't necessarily end up so. That's the feeling I have, as someone who's felt this, who's experienced it.

The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness—a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.

Por más que escondamos los recuerdos, jamás podemos cambiar lo que ya ha ocurrido.

She gives physical presence to the depths of the human psyche.

So this is how it is," I thought. "Time just slips away.

It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials.

I seriously believed I could escape myself–as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself.

Seabird tracks scattered about the surf's edge like pine needles after a brisk wind.

I was living someone else's life, not my own. How much of this person I called myself was really me? And how much was not? These hands clutching the steering wheel - what percentage of them could I really call my own? The scenery outside - how much of it was real? The more I thought about it, the less I seemed to understand.

They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn't care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get back my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self.