Quotes from Haruki Murakami

Un caballero es aquel que no habla demasiado de los impuestos que paga ni de la mujer con quien se acuesta

High school girls came bustling along, their rosy red cheeks puffing white breaths you could have written cartoon captions in.

thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.

Although I was lonely, I was not unhappy. I was able to cling to myself. At least now I had a self to cling to.

I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and open the window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sure enough, a mouldy-coloured half-moon hangs in the sky. Good. We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

A person probably couldn't live without pride. But living by pride, alone the prospects were too dark. Way too dark.

You don't get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.

You have to overcome the fear and anger inside you," the boy named Crow says. "Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That's what being tough is all about.

I was determined that my free time was going to be mine.

It almost hurt to look at that far-off sky.

Hasta ahora había deseado permanecer eternamente en los diecisiete o dieciocho años. Pero ya no lo pretendo. Ya no soy un adolescente. Tengo sentido de la responsabilidad. Kizuki, ya no soy el que estaba contigo. He cumplido veinte años. Y debo pagar un precio por seguir viviendo.

You slowly but surely become a has-been.

The mask possesses equal levels of sorcery and functionality. It has been both handed down from ancient times with darkness and sent back from the future with light.

You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can't erase the history that produced them

I'll just come right out and say it, rich people have no imagination. They can't even scratch their own asses without a ruler and a flashlight.

Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. 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.

With my eyes closed, I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan

The second whiskey is always my favorite. From the third on, it no longer has any taste. It's just something to pour into your stomach.

I was beginning to understand what Hiraku Makimura meant about Ame's wearing him down. Ame didn't give anything. She only took. She consumed those around her to sustain herself. And those around her always gave. Her talent was manifested in a powerful gravitational pull. She believed it was her privilege, her right. Harmony and peace. In order for her to have that, she had everyone waiting on her hand and foot.

that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities

Era abbastanza bella, ma molto comune. Il tipo di ragazza che in un serial televisivo fa la parte dell'amica della protagonista, quella che va a bere qualcosa con lei al bar, e le chiede: «Cosa ti succede? Non mi sembri molto in forma di questi tempi.» Fa solo una breve apparizione e appena scompare dallo schermo nessuno si ricorda più che faccia avesse.

And probably is a word whose weight is incalculable.

He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. That's the only kind of book I can trust, he said. It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature, he added, but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.