What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International)

by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

What’s crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you’ve set for yourself.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don’t, one or the other.

You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

one of the privileges given to those who’ve avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.