Brenda > Brenda's Quotes

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― haruki murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“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

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“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

“Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.”
― Haruki Marukami

“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

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not.”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“He once told me about polar bears - what solitary animals they are. They mate just once a year. One time in a whole year. There is no such thing as a lasting male-female bond in their world. One male polar bear and one female polar bear meet by sheer chance somewhere in the frozen vastness, and they mate. It doesn't take long. And once they are finished, the male runs away from the female as if he is frightened to death: he runs from the place where they have mated. He never looks back - literally. The rest of the year he lives in deep solitude. Mutual communications - the touching of two hearts - do not exist for them. So, that is the story of polar bears - or at least it is what my employer told me about them.'

How very strange.'

Yes, it is strange. I remember asking my employer, ' Then what do polar bears exist for?' ' Yes, exactly,' he said with a big smile. 'Then what do we exist for?”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“Strange and mysterious things, though, aren't they - earthquakes? We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. We even talk about people being 'down to earth' or having their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see that it isn't true. The earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid - From the short story "Thailand”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“The whole terrible fight occured in the area of imagination. That is the precise location of our battlefield. It is there, that we experience our victories and defeats.”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel towards their imagination. (from Super-frog Saves Tokyo)”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake