Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 17

Quotes about:

• When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic.

  Haruki Murakami

  Heart, Toxic, Poison

  11 Copy quote

• Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.

  Haruki Murakami

  Heart, Evil, May

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Oct 28, 2015

  7 Copy quote

• What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.

  Haruki Murakami

  Giving Up, Cat, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 16, 2011

  9 Copy quote

• You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fall, Light, Color

  17 Copy quote

• Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.

  Haruki Murakami

  Inspirational, Teacher, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• She's always polite and kind, but her words lack the kind of curiosity and excitement you'd normally expect. Her true feelings- assuming such things exist- remain hidden away. Except for when a practical sort of decision has to be made, she never gives her personal opinion about anything. She seldom talks about herself, instead letting others talk, nodding warmly as she listens. But most people start to feel vaguely uneasy when talking with her, as if they suspect they're wasting her time, trampling on her private, graceful, dignified world. And that impression is, for the most part, correct.

  Haruki Murakami

  Personal Opinions, Talking, People

  14 Copy quote

• I don't want our relationship to end like this. You're one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to tell me that much, at least.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Want, Few Friends

  5 Copy quote

• The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.

  Haruki Murakami

  Love Life, Evil, Justice

  "Kafka on the Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died longe ago.Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claim me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness

  Haruki Murakami

  Memories, Heart, Light

  8 Copy quote

• The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

  Haruki Murakami

  Soccer, Lonely, Couple

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• Only people who have been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Elliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Pain, Men

  62 Copy quote

• When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Breathing, Smell

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 08, 2014

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fun, Reflection, Mirrors

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from May 15, 2015

  8 Copy quote

• The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.

  Haruki Murakami

  Dream, Morning, Real

  12 Copy quote

• If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe #‎ running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.

  Haruki Murakami

  Running, Believe, Clear Goals

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• I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

  Haruki Murakami

  Mind, Important, Routine

  "Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182". Interview with John Wray, www.theparisreview.org. 2004.

  10 Copy quote

• Then when dusk began to settle he would retrace his steps, back to his own world. And on the way home, a loneliness would always claim his heart. He could never quite get a grip on what it was. It just seemed that whatever lay waiting "out there" was all too vast, too overwhelming for him to possibly ever make a dent in.

  Haruki Murakami

  Loneliness, Home, Heart

  12 Copy quote

• And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fate, Perfect, Miracle

  5 Copy quote

• Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.

  Haruki Murakami

  Memories, Taken, Self

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84: Books 1 and 2”, p.275, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

  Haruki Murakami

  Memories, Past, Devouring

  7 Copy quote

• There's no sense forcing yourself if you don't feel like it. Tell you the truth, I've had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time.

  Haruki Murakami

  Sex, Fear, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hands, Ideas, Lust

  5 Copy quote

• After all this, I won't start to hate you.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hate, Hate You

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.70, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.

  Haruki Murakami

  Strength, Wall, Two Sides

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 27, 2012

  10 Copy quote

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