"She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

"Only the Dead stay seventeen forever."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."
— Haruki Murakami

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
— Haruki Murakami (Hear the Wind Sing)

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

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

"Sometimes 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. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"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

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories)

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"The light of morning decomposes everything."
— Haruki Murakami

"It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart."
— Haruki Murakami

"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 (Kafka on the Shore)

"A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will--over and over."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues.
...
[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"How can the mind be so imperfect?" she says with a smile.

I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose.

"It may well be imperfect," I say, "but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow."

"Where do the lead?"

"To oneself," I answer. "That's where the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere."

I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall.

"Not one thing is your fault," I comfort her."
— Haruki Murakami

"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

"Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"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 (Norwegian Wood)

"あらゆるものは通りすぎる。それは誰にも捉えることはできない。"
— Haruki Murakami (Hear the Wind Sing)

"Toru: "I don't know you well enough to force stuff on you."

Midori: "You mean, if you knew me better, you'd force stuff on me like everybody else?"

M: "It's possible," I said. "That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other."

"You wouldn't do that. I can tell. I'm an expert when it comes to forcing stuff and having stuff forced on you. You're just not that type. That's why I can relax with you. Do you have any idea how many people there are in the world who like to force stuff on people and have stuff forced on them? Tons! And then they make a big fuss, like, 'I forced her,' 'You forced me'! That's what they like. But I don't like it. I just do it 'cause I have to.""
— Haruki Murakami

"With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating."
— Haruki Murakami

"What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed."
— Yukio Mishima (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion)

"But even more than her diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully cataloged every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks.
"You write down your criticisms, do you?"
"I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all."
"But what good does it do?"
"None at all."
"A waste of effort."
"A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however.
A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence."
— Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country)

"The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice."
— Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country)