quotes by Haruki Murakami

"It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Listen up -- there's no war that will end all wars."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"everything just blows me away"
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
— Haruki Murakami

"'Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,' said May Kasahara. 'Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.'"
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle)

"memories are what warm you up from the inside. but they're also what tear you apart."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"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 (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives"
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.” "
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle)

"What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with."
— Haruki Murakami (Dance, Dance, Dance)

"Whiskey,like a beautiful woman,demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink."
— Haruki Murakami (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International))

"In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. "
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them."
— Haruki Murakami

"What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Only the Dead stay seventeen forever. "
— Haruki Murakami

"But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."
— Haruki Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle)

"I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel. "
— Haruki Murakami (Dance, Dance, Dance)

"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 th elimits 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 (Kafka on the Shore)