Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

by Haruki Murakami

“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.”

People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don’t want to live like that.”

No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”

“The only way you know if it’s real or not, the only way to prove it, is by actually making the deal. Isn’t that how it works?”

“Words don’t come out when you’re hurt that deeply,”

Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It’ll only hold so much water and no more.”

The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it.

One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

“Everyone alive has a personality. It’s just more obvious with some people than with others.”