Haruki Murakami Quotes About Eyes

Quotes about: Eyes

• I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.

  Haruki Murakami

  Depressing, Moving, Rain

  "A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1982.

• Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Coward, Ears

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 24, 2017

• What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.

  Haruki Murakami

  Real, Eye, Quake

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “After The Quake”, p.100, Random House

• "They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but I don't believe that." he said. Then, a moment later, he added: "Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else. In my case, that something was the wave."

  Haruki Murakami

  Believe, Eye, Different

  "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". Book by Haruki Murakami, 2006.

• Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Mind, Use

  Haruki Murakami (1993). “Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel”, Vintage

• You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Pyramids, Forever

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 18, 2016

• That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Perfect, Listening

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jan 07, 2015

• What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.

  Haruki Murakami

  Lonely, Eye, Hands

• Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me. What I’ve up till now, what I’m going to do — they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just the stars — how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?

  Haruki Murakami

  Beautiful, Stars, Heart

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Dec 23, 2013

• I’m free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. All I know is I’m totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it.

  Haruki Murakami

  Giving Up, Mean, Eye

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Dec 31, 2012

• Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Acceptance, Hands

  "Murakami defies protests to accept Jerusalem prize" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. February 16, 2009.

• Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Fate, Play

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 11, 2012

• The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Important, Would Be

  Haruki Murakami (1994). “The Elephant Vanishes”, Vintage

• If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Dark, Used

  "Norwegian Wood". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1987.

• I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Eye, Enough

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 24, 2015

• To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.

  Haruki Murakami

  Believe, Eye, Reflection

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jul 29, 2016

• Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.

  Haruki Murakami

  Distance, Eye, Math

• two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes

  Haruki Murakami

  Life, Sleep, Eye

  Haruki Murakami (1993). “Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel”, Vintage

• The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that sunlight was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings on the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact.

  Haruki Murakami

  Distance, Eye, Light

• Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Night, Light

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jan 19, 2016

• I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Mean, Thinking

• I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

  Haruki Murakami

  Lonely, Eye, Space

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.196, Random House

• Oshima's silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. "I know how you feel," he finally says. "But this is something you have to work out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Dark, Hands

• From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Laughter, Spring

• I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.

  Haruki Murakami

  Sadness, Eye, Wind

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