Authors:

Haruki Murakami Quotes - Page 38

All Quotes Acceptance Age Appearance Attitude Autumn Balance Bones Change Chaos Character Choices Concentration Confusion Consciousness Curiosity Darkness Desire Destiny Disappointment Doubt Dying Earth Effort Emptiness End Of The World Evil Falling In Love Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Film Focus Fun Giving Giving Up Growing Up Hate Heart Home House Hurt Imagination Imperfection Inspirational Inspiring Joy Judging Justice Kindness Labyrinth Language Leaving Life Listening Literature Live Life Logic Loneliness Loss Love Luck Lying Marathon Math Memories Metaphor Moon Morning Mountain Nothingness Opportunity Pain Passion Past Perfection Personality Philosophy Purpose Quality Quitting Rain Reading Reality Regret Responsibility Running Sadness School Silence Sleep Solitude Sorrow Soul Spring Struggle Style Summer Sunday Talent Time Today Training Understanding Values Waiting Wall War Water Winter Work Out Worry Writing
You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, 'Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with

You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, 'Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?

Haruki Murakami
Sweet, Spring, Nice

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.

Haruki Murakami
Oil, Trying, Musician
Haruki Murakami (2011). “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, p.78, Random House

You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.

Haruki Murakami
Beautiful, Strong, Heart
"Thailand". Granta Magazine, July 07, 2001.

An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

Haruki Murakami
Fall, Optimistic, Expectations

Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.

Haruki Murakami
Rain, Wind, Smell
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Dance Dance Dance”, p.307, Random House

I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

Haruki Murakami
Dream, Real, Night

I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I?

Haruki Murakami
Eternal
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.59, Random House

Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.

Haruki Murakami
Mean, Thinking, Evil

I’ve had that kind of experience myself: I’m looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what’. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It’s like measles - you can’t show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It’s curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration.

Haruki Murakami
Inspiration, Passion, Thinking
Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84: Books 1 and 2”, p.276, Random House

You are entering a phase of your life in which many different things will occur...bad things that seem good at first and good things that seem bad at first.

Haruki Murakami
Different, Entering, Phases

It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.

Haruki Murakami
Book, Way

Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's not worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions.

Haruki Murakami
Book, Mean, Logic

People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.

Haruki Murakami
Air, Cells, Dust

There wasn't a cloud in the sky, no wind, and everything was quiet around us - all we could hear were birds chirping in the woods. The war seemed like something in a faraway land that had nothing to do with us. We sang songs as we hiked up the hill, sometimes imitating the birds we heard. Except for the fact that the war was still going on, it was a perfect morning.

Haruki Murakami
Song, Morning, War
"Kafka on the Shore". Book by Haruki Murakami, September 12, 2002.

In any case, suffice it to say I enjoyed hearing about faraway places. I had stocked up a whole store of these places, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. I'd close my eyes, and streets would materialize, rows of houses take shape. I could hear people's voices, feel the gentle, steady rhythm of their lives, those people so distant, whom I'd probably never know.

Haruki Murakami
Eye, Voice, People

Since I'm a novelist I'm the opposite of you - I believe that what's most important is what cannot be measured. I'm not denying your way of thinking, but the greater part of people's lives consist of things that are unmeasurable, and trying to change all these to something measurable is realistically impossible.

Haruki Murakami
Believe, Thinking, Opposites
FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Oct 01, 2015

Everything has boundaries. the same holds true with thought. you shouldn't fear boundaries, but you also should not be afraid of destroying them. that's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. what's really important in life is always the things that are secondary.

Haruki Murakami
Important, Want, Life Is

Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know a soul?

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Soul, Would Be
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Norwegian Wood”, p.223, Random House

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track.

Haruki Murakami
Character, Thinking, Order

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

Why?" she screamed. "Are you crazy? You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don't know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl SAY something like this? I like you more than I like him, that's all. I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn't. I fell in love with you!

Haruki Murakami
Girl, I Like You, Crazy

The morning air of the pasture turned steadily cooler. Day by day, the bright golden leaves of the birches turned more spotted as the first winds of winter slipped between the withered branches and across the highlands toward the southeast. Stopping in the center of the pasture, I could hear the winds clearly. No turning back, they pronounced. The brief autumn was gone.

Haruki Murakami
Morning, Autumn, Winter
"A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, December 31, 1989.

If I'm going to merely ramble, maybe I should just snuggle under the warm covers, think of Miu, and play with myself.

Haruki Murakami
Thinking, Play, Should
Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.150, Random House

Animals that not only move by their own free will and share feelings with people but also possess sight and hearing qualify as deserving of names.

Haruki Murakami
Moving, Animal, Sight

Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth.

Haruki Murakami
Rain, Unique, Roots
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1997.

You May Also Like: